News

Yumanity Therapeutics has been awarded a $500,000 research grant from the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF) to help accelerate testing of an investigational Parkinson’s disease therapy, YTX-7739. “MJFF is a globally recognized advocate and supporter of innovative research toward new treatments to stop Parkinson’s…

Biogen and Denali Therapeutics are planning to launch two late-stage clinical trials to further evaluate the potential of their investigational oral therapy BIIB122/DNL151 in treating people with Parkinson’s disease. The Phase 3 and Phase 2b trials, expected to commence this year, will be led by Biogen and follow promising results…

Psychosis, including hallucinations and delusions, is frequent in people with late-stage Parkinson’s disease a study reported, after psychotic symptoms were confirmed in more than half of the 92 patients examined. Some degree of cognitive impairment was found in almost all evaluated patients, with study participants diagnosed a mean of 15.9…

Speech impairments appear to associate with freezing of gait symptoms — a sudden inability to walk — in people with Parkinson’s disease, a study reported. Speech assessments, especially during the “on-state” of medication use — immediately after taking dopamine-based medicines — may identify Parkinson’s patients vulnerable to freezing of…

Iktos is working with Astrogen to use artificial intelligence (AI) to identify small molecules as candidates for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease. Under the collaboration’s terms, Iktos will apply its proprietary machine-learning algorithm to virtually “sketch”molecules directed against a defined target and shortlist candidates for preclinical studies, the companies…

Oral health affects life quality in adults with Parkinson’s, with oral health worsening with disease progression and resulting in a related greater decline in quality of life than is evident in adults of similar age without this disorder, a small study from the Netherlands reports. Motor difficulties impacting daily…

BlueRock Therapeutics’ Phase 1 trial testing DA01 — an investigational therapy to restore neuron loss — has completed enrolling its first group of patients with advanced Parkinson’s disease. Meanwhile, enrollment for the second and final high-dose cohort of the open-label trial (NTC04802733) is still ongoing at sites…

Alembic Pharmaceuticals has received final approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its generic version of entacapone as an add-on therapy for treating end-of-dose “wearing off” in Parkinson’s disease, the company announced. These entacapone tablets are “therapeutically equivalent” to Comtan and treat the motor…

Adding a plant-derived agent called Withania somnifera, used in traditional Ayurvedic medicine and thought to help with disturbed sleep, to the insomnia medicines given a woman with Parkinson’s disease appears to have eased her insomnia and completely alleviated her restless leg syndrome, researchers in India report. The case report, “…

Experiencing a traumatic brain injury (TBI) is associated with an earlier age of Parkinson’s onset, but not with more severe disease-associated nerve cell loss or younger age of death, a study suggests. These findings, presented at the 2021 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Denver and online, suggest that…