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[C. Omics & Fusion Biology] C-2

Autophagy context-based drug repurposing approach with

Parkinson's disease-specific network

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Seunghwan Jung¹,² , Junseok Park¹,² , Jaywook Han¹,², Doheon Lee¹,²*
¹Department of Bio and Brain Engineering, KAIST, Daejeon 34141, Korea, ²Bio-Synergy Research Center, Bio-

Synergy Research Center, Daejeon 34141, Korea

Parkinson's disease is a major long-term degenerative disease that affects the motor system. Parkinson's disease

has been increasing over the past 30 years, despite ongoing research and efforts at drug development. The reason
is that previous drug development for Parkinson's disease has mainly focused on recovering dopamine levels, which

only provide short-term relief. Recent studies prove that misfolded protein aggregation causes mitochondria
dysfunction and neuroinflammation so that elimination of the misfolded protein should offer an effective long-term

treatment for Parkinson's disease. A promising mechanism to eliminate the misfolded protein is autophagy. We
developed a pipeline to identify autophagy-inducing candidate drugs for Parkinson's disease based on Parkinson's

disease-specific network and the relationship between drug targets and core autophagy genes. We found candidate
drugs that show notable proximity scores and conflicting states to activate the autophagy mechanism.