13 October 2022

Cure Parkinson’s is delighted to announce that Dr Leah Mursaleen has been appointed to the newly created role, Head of Pipeline Research. The purpose of this role is to speed up and drive forward early-stage research to ensure that novel treatments for potentially slowing/stopping the progression of Parkinson’s are ready to be taken to clinical trial as soon as possible.

Dr Mursaleen has worked for Cure Parkinson’s since 2014, and until recently worked within the research team as Research Manager.

Dr Mursaleen’s new role will have a particular focus on progressing early-stage research of compounds evaluated by Cure Parkinson’s International Linked Clinical Trials (iLCT) programme. The iLCT initiative focuses on bringing new potentially disease modifying treatments to clinical trial for use in Parkinson’s.

Each year the iLCT Committee, which comprises a panel of world-leading scientists and Parkinson’s researchers, meets to evaluate a set of detailed dossiers on therapies that have displayed disease modifying potential. Their task is to rank and prioritise those that are ready to be taken into clinical trial to be tested as potential new treatments for Parkinson’s. Some of the agents evaluated at this meeting are deemed to show great potential, however further research is required before they are ready to be tested in people with Parkinson’s.

As Head of Pipeline Research, Dr Mursaleen will be tasked with driving forward the progression of this pre-clinical and early-stage iLCT-associated pipeline of research, so that more therapies will be fully ready to be taken to clinical stage sooner. Cure Parkinson’s hopes that this proactive approach will further accelerate the journey towards a cure.

Dr Simon Stott, Director of Research at Cure Parkinson’s, said:

Efforts to enhance the international Linked Clinical Trials programme by proactively getting the required research done will definitely help to speed up the process of getting novel disease modifying therapies into clinical testing for Parkinson’s. I can think of no one better than Leah to lead on that effort. She is world class and has all of the expertise and experience required. We are very lucky to have her.”

Dr Simon Stott, Cure Parkinson’s

Helen Matthews, Deputy CEO of Cure Parkinson’s, said:

This new role reflects Cure Parkinson’s commitment to ensure we are investigating every potentially disease modifying therapy that has been evaluated by the iLCT committee.  It is fantastic that Leah has accepted this role as she is highly skilled and dedicated to finding solutions. She will bring her wonderful energy to this work and with that open even more avenues to develop treatments to slow, stop or reverse Parkinson’s.”

Helen Matthews, Cure Parkinson’s
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