News

The Michael J. Fox Foundation has awarded $5.2 million to scientists at Arizona State University (ASU) to support three research projects exploring new treatment options for Parkinson’s disease. The projects will be led by Jeffrey Kordower, PhD, founding director of the Banner Neurodegenerative Disease Research Center at ASU.

ABL Bio and Sanofi are working under a global licensing agreement to jointly develop ABL301 — an investigational bispecific antibody targeting both alpha-synuclein and insulin-like growth factor 1 receptor (IGF1R) — in possibly treating Parkinson’s disease. Under the agreement, ABL Bio will lead further preclinical testing and a…

Zhittya Genesis Medicine plans to launch what it is calling a “Compassionate Use Clinical Trial” of FGF-1, a biological compound aiming to stimulate new blood vessel growth in the brain, for people with mild-to-moderately severe Parkinson’s disease. Those interested in joining this open-label (no placebo group) pilot safety and early efficacy…

People who took part in remote, video-conducted clinical trials for Parkinson’s disease reported high levels of satisfaction and interest in participating in future studies with remote video visits, scientists report. Three such trials showed that recruitment was feasible and enrolled participants were geographically dispersed — from across dozens of…

A first patient with Parkinson’s disease has been dosed with UB-312, Vaxxinity’s experimental vaccine therapy targeting alpha-synuclein, after treatment safety and tolerability was seen in healthy volunteers in a clinical trial. This marks the beginning of Part B in the Phase 1 trial (NCT04075318), which is enrolling up…

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…