News

Two nonprofits have joined in an international partnership to accelerate the development of therapies for Parkinson’s disease (PD), a neurodegenerative condition thought to affect 10 million people globally. The Parkinson’s Foundation will invest at least $3 million over the next three years in Parkinson’s Virtual Biotech, the treatment development arm…

The first patient has been dosed in a clinical trial testing Annovis Bio’s buntanetap as an oral therapy for early-stage Parkinson’s disease, the company announced. The Phase 3 clinical trial (NCT05357989) got started shortly after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave the company the…

Enrollment is now complete for a Phase 2 trial of NYX-458, Aptinyx’s investigational therapy to treat cognitive impairment in people with Parkinson’s disease. After a pause in enrollment due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the trial resumed enrolling in April 2021. Now, a total of 99 adults, ages…

Seelos Therapeutics has been awarded a grant from the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research to advance the development of its gene therapy candidate SLS-004 in people with Parkinson’s disease. SLS-004 aims to regulate the expression, or levels, of the SNCA gene, which provides instructions to produce…

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has developed a device that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to detect the presence and severity of Parkinson’s disease through patients’ breathing patterns. Because respiratory symptoms occur at early stages of the disease, researchers proposed that breathing assessment may help in diagnosing…

Patients with early-onset or familial forms of Parkinson’s disease (PD) had a higher burden of rare mutations in the PPARGC1A gene compared with healthy people, whereas no significant relationship was observed between these mutations and late-onset sporadic Parkinson’s, a study found. While the findings suggest that PPARGC1A could contribute to the…

A one-hour group singing session significantly eased problems with walking and posture, as well as tremors, in adults with Parkinson’s disease who were on stable medication, a small study reported. While no significant benefits were seen for speech and facial expression, or for bradykinesia (slowness of movement), patients taking…

The first participant has been dosed in a Phase 2 clinical trial testing IkT-148009, an experimental oral therapy for Parkinson’s disease being developed by Inhibikase Therapeutics. This step “represents a major milestone in the development of IkT-148009 for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease and related disorders,” Milton Werner,…

A feature on MRI images called the “swallow tail sign” has long been thought to correspond to a dopaminergic brain region clearly affected by Parkinson’s disease — but a new study suggests this is not the case. High-resolution MRI imaging shows only a partial overlap of these two regions, and…

Levels of a protein called glycoprotein nonmetastatic melanoma protein B (GPNMB) are elevated in the blood of people with Parkinson’s disease, indicating the protein may be a biomarker for the neurological disorder, according to a new study. GPNMB also helps to promote the toxic aggregation of alpha-synuclein protein in…