Alumni Participants

THANK YOU to all of our research participants.  Developing new treatments, and ultimately a cure, for Parkinson’s disease truly could not happen without your contributions to research.  Every future patient who benefits from this work is forever in your debt. We will be updating this page intermittently as new findings in various studies develop.

GENE-TRANSFER THERAPY

The Neurologix-funded Phase II, double-blind, sham surgery controlled AAV2-GAD gene-transfer therapy trial has completed and was found to 1) be safe and 2) improve patient’s symptoms of bradykinesia (slowness), muscle rigidity, and tremor more than the sham-surgery control (Lancet Neurology paper). This study was the first successful randomized, double-blind gene therapy trial for any neurological disorder and it justifies the continued development of gene therapy for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease.

The Ceregene-funded Phase I/II, double-blind, sham surgery controlled AAV2‐Neurturin (CERE‐120) gene-transfer therapy trial has completed enrollment.  This study found that the surgical procedure was feasible and safe.  However, the 15 month data did not show a significant difference in the progression of Parkinson’s disease motor symptoms between the group that received the treatment and the ‘sham’ surgery group.  The details of this study have not yet been published and the long-term follow up of all participants is currently underway.

FUNCTIONAL IMAGING STUDIES

We are still collecting the data from our functional imaging studies.  We will be posting results here as soon as we have completed analysis of the data.  We have presented some preliminary data at the 2013 Cognitive Neuroscience Society Annual Meeting and at the 2013 Human Brain Mapping Annual Meeting, which showed the feasibility of using functional imaging to investigate cognition in patients with Parkinson’s disease.

MICHAEL J. FOX FOUNDATION

We have presented our data from the MJFF project, “Development of Multimodal Imaging Biomarkers for Cognitive Dysfunction in Parkinson’s Disease,” at the 2015 Cognitive Neuroscience Society Annual (CNS) Meeting and at the 2015 Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM) Meeting

CNS 2015:

(a)    Impaired Attentional Control during Working Memory in Parkinson’s Disease

(b)   Effects of Cueing on Semantic Memory in Parkinson’s disease with Comorbid Depression

OHBM 2015:

(a)    Dopaminergic Changes in Functional Connectivity during a Working Memory Task in Parkinson’s Disease