This year we made significant strides in therapies to better manage Parkinson's disease (PD) symptoms, moved closer to a treatment that will slow or stop progression, and learned more about what's happening in cells of people with PD.
We asked some of MJFF's research team of PhD neuroscientists what Foundation accomplishments they are most proud of from 2016 and the promising initiatives they're looking forward to in the new year.
Mark Frasier, PhD
Senior Vice President, Research Programs
Through our investment in building large datasets (such as in The Fox Investigation for New Discovery of Biomarkers or BioFIND and the Parkinson's Progression Markers Initiative or PPMI studies), we are now seeing this tipping point in PD research to enable us to redefine Parkinson's disease. The first example of this was through our PPMI Data Challenge in which we offered a prize to researchers who addressed vexing questions in Parkinson's disease using the PPMI dataset. Multi-disciplinary teams of computer scientists, neurologists and biologists used sophisticated analytic approaches to uncover new insights to the disease. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Over the next several years we anticipate more teams and more data will lead to a better understanding of the cause, variability and progression of the disease, which will ultimately impact how we treat patients and develop new drugs for Parkinson's.
Jamie Hamilton, PhD
Associate Director, Research Programs
The most exciting this year for me was announcement of the $2M MJFF alpha-synuclein imaging prizeto accelerate therapeutic discovery in PD research. While we have identified a few candidate agents in 2016, we anticipate further progress will be made by MJFF-funded initiatives in the new year.
Also, MJFF made several strategic investments this year to explore non-invasive ways to measure changes seen in PD, and we anticipate interesting and novel findings in 2017.
Samantha Hutten, PhD
Senior Associate Director, Research Programs
We successfully concluded a head-to-head study comparing different laboratory tests to measure the alpha-synuclein protein. Data, expected in early 2017, will help us understand which test best performs and will help inform how we select patients in trials, monitor disease progression, and assess whether alpha-synuclein drugs are working. In addition, we kicked off a follow-up study for another head-to-head comparison study, this time comparing tests to measure different forms of alpha-synuclein.
Liliana Menalled, PhD
Senior Associate Director, Research Programs
Our Foundation's mission is to accelerate development of therapies that can slow or halt the progression of Parkinson's disease. In the fall of 2016 we identified, and will be funding in 2017, a handful of projects that aim to stop PD by targeting proteins and pathways known to play a role in the disease. The learnings from these studies will bring us steps closer to our ultimate goal.
Anna Naito, PhD
Senior Associate Director, Research Programs
In 2016, we accelerated our search for important biological markers of Parkinson's disease and made strides through our BioFIND study. We reinvented our discovery approach by casting a wide net to uncover connections in blood, spinal fluid, saliva, DNA and RNA, which expedited discovery of critical markers involved in the disease process. We are working quickly to advance the use of these markers.
And we're launching a landmark DNA and RNA sequencing study to discover new markers of Parkinson's progression. These measures would help identify who is at risk for developing PD, observe how the disease is progressing, and assess the impact of treatments to slow or stop the disease.
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https://www.michaeljfox.org/foundation/news-detail.php?our-staff-scientists-review-year-research-progress&et_cid=768226&et_rid=61620490&et_lid=Read+Moreem_cid=
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