Research
The
Sherer
Report
A Note from Our CEO
Driving Research with Patient Power
We’ve started some of this work in our Parkinson’s
Progression Markers Initiative study and are
pursuing partnerships to do more. (Read more on
page 7.)
Big things are happening in Parkinson’s research.
A handful of symptomatic therapies are
moving toward patients and multiple disease-
modifying medicines are in clinical trials. These
advancements, decades in the making, are the
result of significant Foundation investments
made possible by your support and research
participation.
While we look at the deepest parts of the cells,
we also need to listen to the broad Parkinson’s
population. As you read in our cover story, our
online study Fox Insight aims to amplify the voice
of Parkinson’s patients and their loved ones. The
wisdom you contribute on the lived experience
of PD — from symptom frequency to medication
effects — can help researchers prioritize and
design stu dies to address your most critical needs.
And it’s easy to participate from your own home. I
hope you will sign up at foxinsight.org.
As treatments progress, we must learn more
about Parkinson’s disease (PD) and the impact
of new drugs. Technology is helping us expand
the scale and scope of these investigations, going
wide to gather an unprecedented amount of data
from thousands of people and deep to zoom in on
some of the most powerful parts of our cells.
High-tech approaches are critical to continued
progress. But no technology can get us where we
need to go without you — patients and families
whose contributions are the engine driving us
toward a future without Parkinson’s disease.
Whether you join a study, advocate for federal
research funding or financially support our work,
you are making a difference. Thank you for all
you do.
This information will help us move medicine
forward faster and with greater likelihood to
address patients’ greatest needs — developing
personalized therapies against genetic mutations
and other specific changes, selecting people
most likely to benefit for trials, and defining
impact on quality of life as patients (along with
doctors) see it.
Cutting-edge technology can examine cellular
activity in ever greater detail — not just DNA, but
RNA and the countless proteins that carry out
vital functions. These techniques are rapidly and
radically altering what studies are possible and
how quickly this work can be done, which could
speed therapies and the search for an objective
measure of PD.
3
Fall/Winter
The Fox Focus
2017