News

Aspen Neuroscience, a new biotech company, has raised $6.5 million to develop cell therapies for Parkinson’s disease using patients’ own cells. The company was co-founded by renowned stem cell scientists Jeanne F. Loring, PhD, and Andres Bratt-Leal, PhD, and initially supported by Summit for Stem Cell, a…

Drinking coffee regularly may help reduce the risk of neurodegenerative diseases — including Parkinson’s disease — particularly in men, according to a new report from the Institute for Scientific Information on Coffee (ISIC). With the substantial improvements in medical care, health, and quality of life over the…

Not everyone’s brain connections map at exactly the same location, which may explain why deep brain stimulation (DBS) therapy, used for severe cases of Parkinson’s and other neurological conditions, works for some patients and not for others, a study has found. The findings,”Integrative and Network-Specific Connectivity of the…

The Parkinson’s Foundation announced that it has added five sites to its national initiative that provides complimentary genetic testing and counseling to people with Parkinson’s disease (PD). In addition to helping patients better understand their disease, the program aims to improve Parkinson’s therapies — and enable personalized treatments —…

Defects in chaperone proteins that interact with alpha-synuclein and work as a type of “molecular bodyguard” may help drive the formation of Lewy bodies, which are a hallmark of Parkinson’s disease. The findings were published in the journal Nature, in a study titled “Regulation of…

Clumps, or aggregates of alpha-synuclein protein in the brain, a hallmark of Parkinon’s disease, are more heterogeneous than previously thought, according to a new study. Moreover, the protein’s 3D-structure is different in Parkinson’s patients as compared with lab-made versions. These findings may hold implications for the development of…

Measuring the levels of alpha-synuclein in red blood cells can reliably distinguish people with Parkinson’s disease and evident motor symptoms from healthy individuals, and could serve as a diagnostic biomarker, a study reports. These levels in Parkinson’s patients with symptoms of dementia, however, did not measurably differ from healthy…

Mission Therapeutics and AbbVie have identified several molecules, called deubiquitylating enzymes, or DUBs, that may be potential therapeutic targets to treat Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. This comes after the two companies announced a collaboration last year to identify DUB inhibitors to treat these neurodegenerative…

Cerevance has initiated a Phase 2 clinical trial to evaluate the safety and efficacy of its oral investigational therapy CVN424 for treating Parkinson’s disease motor symptoms. CVN424 is small molecule that can penetrate the brain and modulate the activity of specific nerve cells in the striatum…

Tasigna (nilotinib), an approved leukemia medication being tested as a repurposed treatment for Parkinson’s disease, failed to show any clinically meaningful benefits in a Phase 2 trial, the study’s steering committee announced. Although an announcement of the study’s topline data was originally planned for 2020, the trial’s steering…