MJFF Welcomes Applications to Support Research Into Parkinson’s

The Michael J. Fox Foundation (MJFF) is supporting six different funding programs for projects related to Parkinson’s disease, with applications now being accepted.

The six  Requests for Applications (RFAs) are meant to support work focused on different aspects of Parkinson’s research, from data analysis to preclinical and clinical therapy development.

Investigators working in non- and for-profit organizations, both within and outside the U.S., are welcome to apply to any of the six funding programs, MJFF announced in a release. Project pre-proposals should be submitted by Oct. 22, 2020.

The Therapeutic Pipeline Program is funding projects focused on developing therapies that may be superior to those now available at either slowing disease progression or alleviating its symptoms. It also covers work into approved treatments for other disorders that have the potential to be repurposed to treat Parkinson’s.

This program is particularly geared toward projects aiming to develop new treatments for non-motor symptoms of Parkinson’s, as well as new telemedicine interventions.

The Target Advancement Program supports projects aiming to identify and validate new targets for Parkinson’s treatments, bridging the gap between basic and applied research. The Target Advancement and the Therapeutic Pipeline programs are both part of MJFF’s Edmond J. Safra Core Programs for PD Research.

Supporting clinical trials and patient evaluations, the Development and Validation of Improved Outcome Measures program is funding projects focused on developing disease biomarkers that can be used to facilitate its diagnosis, evaluate progression, or monitor patients’ response to treatment.

Also aiming to improve the diagnosis and treatment of patients is the PIPETTE: 4R Tau and Alpha-Synuclein PET Tracer Development program. This funding program, created in partnership with the Rainwater Charitable Foundation, aims to support the development of new positron emission tomography (PET) imaging agents for tau and alpha-synuclein, two proteins known to form toxic clumps in the brain of people with Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.

A webinar dedicated to PIPETTE is set for Sept. 2. Registrations can be made here.

Two other programs, Accelerating Publication of Parkinson’s Disease Replication Data and Analysis of Patient-Reported Outcomes from Fox Insight, are also accepting applications.

The first, carried out in collaboration with the Journal of Parkinson’s Disease, aims to support the dissemination of unpublished data from experiments done to confirm findings of previously published studies. The second aims to support projects analyzing genetic and patient outcomes data collected through Fox Insight, an online study gathering self-reported data about the health experiences of adults with and without Parkinson’s. Healthy people are serving as a control group.

More information on the application and review process for each RFA can be found here. Those interested in learning more about these RFAs may also register to attend an MJFF webinar on Sept. 3, starting at noon ET.