Author Archives: David Melamed, PhD

The California Parkinson’s Disease Registry (CPDR) will continue through June 2021, after gaining support from the state’s governor and $380,000 in extension funding from the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF), the foundation announced. Due to the economic toll of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated research…

The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) has given a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant totaling $2.4 million to Cutaneous NeuroDiagnostics (CND) to advance development of its Syn-One Test for diagnosing Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. The SBIR grant (R44NS117214), which…

Pharmather has entered into an exclusive licensing agreement with the University of Arizona, allowing the company to further develop ketamine as a potential treatment of dyskinesia — involuntary, jerky movements — associated with levodopa use in people with Parkinson’s disease. The company plans…

STADA Arzneimittel has announced the acquisition of Sweden-based Lobsor Pharmaceuticals, gaining the rights to its triple-combination therapy of levodopa, carbidopa, and entacapone, delivered via modern pump technology, as a treatment for patients with late-stage Parkinson’s disease. The triple-combo treatment has already been approved in most…

Portuguese pharmaceutical company BIAL has announced the opening of a Parkinson’s disease research facility in Cambridge, Mass., as part of its expansion to the United States under the name BIAL Biotech. Simultaneously, BIAL has acquired the Parkinson’s research programs operated by Lysosomal Therapeutics (LTI), including its lead candidate,…

The Engineering and Physical Research Sciences Council (EPRSC) at UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has awarded researchers at Imperial College London with a £5.5 million ($7.07 million) grant to develop a non-invasive technology that monitors the activity of individual brain cells. The grant was awarded by the…

The International Linked Clinical Trials (iLCT) program, a collaborative effort from The Cure Parkinson’s Trust (CPT), the Van Andel Institute (VAI), and now the John Black Charitable Foundation (JBCF), has pledged $6.75 million over three years to support clinical trials of potential Parkinson’s disease treatments.

The first participants have been dosed in the initial part of a Phase 1 clinical trial evaluating the investigational compound CST-2032 as a treatment for neurodegenerative disease, according to the therapy’s developers, CuraSen Therapeutics. The trial will enroll up to 70 healthy volunteers and patients with a variety…

The American Parkinson Disease Association (APDA) has awarded $1.4 million toward research into Parkinson’s disease for 2020–2021, including the first-ever Diversity in Parkinson’s Disease Research Grant. Following the first APDA Diversity in Parkinson’s Disease Research Conference held in May 2019, at which experts discussed the impact…

The first three patients have been dosed in a Phase 2a clinical trial investigating the safety and effectiveness of ANVS401, Annovis Bio’s lead compound designed as a potential treatment for Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. The launch of the Phase 2a trial (NCT04524351) marks the second such…