p63

The Hospital for Sick Children - Release: "'We discovered that p63 is the major death-promoting protein for nerve cells during fetal and post-natal development,' said Dr. David Kaplan, the paper's senior author, senior scientist at SickKids, professor of Molecular Genetics, Medical Genetics & Microbiology at U of T, Canada Research Chair in Cancer and Neuroscience, and co-team leader on the NeuroScience Canada Brain Repair Program grant with Dr. Freda Miller of SickKids. 'Proteins such as p63 that regulate beneficial cell death processes during development may cause adverse affects later in life by making us more sensitive to injury and disease.'

While p63 is involved in determining which nerve cells die, the research team also suspects that it determines whether nerve cells die when injured or in neurological and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases."