THE FOX
MARK SELIGER
FOCUS
ON PARKINSON’S
FALL/WINTER 2015 NEWSLETTER
A FUTURE WITHOUT
PARKINSON’S DISEASE
The Foundation shares in film-focused fun,
but with a serious twist.
by cheryl blowers and holly teichholtz
The nation is abuzz with excitement about “Marty McFly Day” —
October 21, 2015, the date on which Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox)
and Dr. Emmett “Doc” Brown (Christopher Lloyd) arrive to the
future in the second installment of the iconic Back to the Future
trilogy. The films accurately predicted some elements of life in 2015,
though fully functional hoverboards and robot servers in restaurants
remain the stuff of science fiction.
Within the Parkinson’s disease (PD) community, the “future”
world of 2015 holds immense promise for patients and their
families. Fueled by genetic discoveries and powered by emerging
technologies that amplify the patient voice in research, today’s PD
drug development pipeline is more robust than at any other time
in history.
Back in 2012, MJFF asked a few members of our Executive
Scientific Advisory Board to predict the state of PD research in 2015.
Several of their predictions have become reality — including Matt
Farrer, PhD’s optimism for progress to better integrate genetic
discoveries into a big-picture understanding of how Parkinson’s
arises (the genetics cohort of the Parkinson’s Progression Markers
Initiative launched in 2014) and Irene Hegeman Richard, MD’s
hope that more people would take part in research (thousands have
registered with Fox Trial Finder and Fox Insight since then).
continued on page 16 ›
T U R N TO
PAGE 14
for adv
ice o
a PD d n sharing
iagn
at wor osis
k.
IN THIS ISSUE
2 Patients
Champion Online
Research
Parkinson’s patients
are advancing research
through the latest
technology and MJFF’s
virtual clinical study.
3 The Sherer
Report
MJFF CEO Todd
Sherer, PhD, on the
promise of new
treatments advancing
in clinical trials
7 Research
News Briefs
Progress in slowing
disease progression,
tracking PD’s effects on
the brain and
addressing depression
18 Tour de Fox:
14,000 Miles and
Nearly $2 Million
The Parkinson’s
community and
Team Fox unite for
a three-month journey
to help speed a cure.