MJFF and ASAP invest $261M in global network for Parkinson’s research
Funding for CRN seeks to unite scientists, advance personalized therapies
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- Two nonprofits, the MJFF and ASAP, are together investing $261 million to expand Parkinson's research.
- The new funding will support scientists' efforts to better understand the disease's variability and advance personalized therapies.
- Under the Collaborative Research Network, global teams will work together to accelerate clinical discoveries.
Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s (ASAP) and The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF) are together investing $261 million in new grant funding to better understand what drives Parkinson’s disease and to accelerate the development of more personalized therapies.
The monies will expand the Collaborative Research Network (CRN), supporting 32 new global teams working together to uncover why the disease varies so widely between patients — from symptoms and progression to underlying biology.
The CRN’s website calls itself “a first-of-its-kind global community of multidisciplinary and multi-institutional teams working together to spark new discoveries in Parkinson’s disease (PD) research.”
The network’s design reflects a new model for collaborative, open scientific research in which multidisciplinary teams worldwide share data, tools, and discoveries to accelerate progress. With this funding, ASAP’s total investment in the CRN is now more than $550 million, according to a press release from the nonprofit announcing the funding.
“This CRN expansion is designed to funnel innovative ideas into the research and development pipeline while systematically dismantling technical roadblocks,” said Sonya Dumanis, PhD, managing director of ASAP. “By accounting for the inherent heterogeneity of the disease to validate targets within a human biological context, we are accelerating the development of the next generation of personalized therapies.”
Parkinson’s is caused by the progressive loss of nerve cells that produce dopamine, a signaling molecule nerve cells use to communicate. This results in problems with brain signaling that drive the disease’s symptoms.
However, people with Parkinson’s can experience different symptoms, ages of onset, and rates of progression. This variability — known as disease heterogeneity — is one of the biggest challenges pointed out by researchers in the field.
According to scientists, understanding why Parkinson’s develops and progresses differently in each person is critical for developing more targeted and effective treatments.
Research network aims for collaboration vs. competition
The CRN aims to tackle the complexity problem by favoring collaboration over competition, funding projects that bring together research teams to advance Parkinson’s research. With the addition of the new 32 teams, ASAP has funded a total of 67 research teams, bringing together nearly 400 researchers across 187 institutions in 24 countries, according to the nonprofit.
Since its launch in 2020, the network has generated hundreds of shared resources, including datasets, lab tools, and protocols used worldwide. Early findings from the initiative have identified promising novel targets that are now advancing into pharmaceutical research and clinical development.
In this next phase of the program, each team will receive between $6 and $9 million over three years, depending on the research theme.
Research goals include understanding how exposure to pesticides and air pollution interact with genetics to cause and accelerate Parkinson’s and how aging-related changes may increase an individual’s vulnerability to the disease. Another goal is to investigate how disruption of brain circuits by alpha-synuclein clumps, a hallmark of Parkinson’s, contributes to disease symptoms.
This level of coordinated, global investment brings together leading scientists to tackle the most critical questions about the disease; not in isolation, but as a connected community working to accelerate discovery and move new ideas into the treatment pipeline.
Researchers will also explore whether abnormal proteins associated with other neurodegenerative conditions may influence Parkinson’s in individual patients. Other questions include understanding how the alpha-synuclein seeding amplification assay works to differentiate disease subtypes and studying the involvement of the brain’s clearance mechanisms.
Several new teams will develop novel resources for the research community — such as genetically engineered cell lines, viral vectors, and advanced chemical probes — to support work on targets identified in previous CRN grants. Such resources help remove technical barriers that can slow research and drug development, the nonprofit notes.
For patients, this collaborative approach could translate into faster progress — the goal of the network. By openly sharing findings and working across disciplines, researchers hope to shorten the path from lab discoveries to clinical application.
“This level of coordinated, global investment brings together leading scientists to tackle the most critical questions about the disease; not in isolation, but as a connected community working to accelerate discovery and move new ideas into the treatment pipeline,” said Todd Sherer, PhD, chief mission officer at MJFF. “For people living with Parkinson’s, the need for better treatments has never been more urgent.”
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