Parkinson’s disease is a common neurodegenerative disorder resulting in progressive motor and cognitive decline, among other symptoms. While we have recently celebrated the 200^th anniversary of the discovery of Parkinson’s, there are still millions of people suffering from this condition worldwide. There is currently no disease-modifying therapy in order to combat the pathology, widely associated with alpha-synuclein, that causes this disease. It is imperative, therefore, to produce publicly available methodological resources in order to progress the research of this field. This collection will present different techniques, from in vitro to in vivo, that will enable researchers to study the pathophysiology and explore therapeutic options for Parkinson’s research.

We will be focusing on laboratory techniques that are widely interesting to the Parkinson’s research community, in order to target a wide scope of researchers. More specifically, we will look into ways of producing robust alpha-synuclein aggregates that can elicit toxic effects both in vitro and in vivo. This collection will also focus on how to elicit aggregation in vivo through intracranial injections of aggregated material, and then, on how to stereologically evaluate the effect caused by the aggregates. We will also focus on how to evaluate the immune response of the CNS in parkinsonian models, as well as how to measure dopaminergic release in response to transgenic, viral, or chemical modification in the murine striatum. Finally, given the association between mitochondrial health and Parkinson’s, we will describe advanced methods to determine mitochondrial health in Parkinson’s models. Together, these articles will provide a solid methodology for the research of several aspects of Parkinson's, in order to investigate therapeutic approaches for this disease.