Webinar: Advancing Parkinson’s trial designs
Held in partnership with the University of Edinburgh and the Journal of Parkinson’s Disease, with Edinburgh University’s Professor Tilo Kunath as chair.
Robust, high-quality clinical trials can take years to lead to results. To help address this, researchers have been devising methods to speed up the clinical trial process to accelerate the development and progression of potential treatments. This hour-long webinar focusses on multi-arm, multi-stage (MAMS) clinical trial platforms and how researchers are using these to test multiple therapies simultaneously.
The recording for this webinar is now available.
Download the pre-reading document
Additional takeaways from the discussion
- Traditional clinical trials typically test a single treatment against a placebo (a drug with no therapeutic effect) in separate trials, evaluating its effectiveness and safety one at a time.
- Multi-arm, multi-stage (MAMS) platforms are a clinical trial model that allows multiple treatments to be tested against one placebo in a single trial. This makes the process more efficient and reduces the time and resources needed. Additionally, MAMS platforms can facilitate progression of drugs through the different phases or stages of clinical testing.
- The flexibility of MAMS platforms means new treatment arms can be added or swapped during the trial based on interim results.
- MAMS platforms have been applied in conditions like multiple sclerosis (OCTOPUS platform) and prostate cancer, and there is growing interest in applying them to Parkinson’s research.
- The EJS ACT-PD platform, launching in the UK, will be the first MAMS platform for Parkinson’s, focused on assessing disease-modifying drugs, with recruitment set to open later this year.
- The SLEIPNIR platform in Norway aims to de-risk Parkinson’s treatments, providing thorough evaluations to accelerate progression to later trial phases and ultimately speed up regulatory approval. This platform will feed into larger trials like EJS ACT-PD and HYDRA – the upcoming Norwegian phase 3 platform.
- For those interested in learning more about MAMS platforms, these resources may be useful:
Meet our panelists
Georgia Mills is the Research Project Manager for EJS ACT-PD, an upcoming MAMS platform for Parkinson’s in the UK, at University College London (UCL). Georgia leads and coordinates much of the trial operations and helps to oversee the seven key consortium working groups.
Professor Charalampos (Haris) Tzoulis is a Professor of Neurology and Neurogenetics in the Department of Clinical Medicine at the University of Bergen (UIB) and Haukeland University Hospital. His research focus is on exploring the role of mitochondrial dysfunction in Parkinson’s and the development of neuroprotective therapies. He is currently working to set-up the SLEIPNIR study, a MAMS de-risking platform in Norway, as well as HYDRA, a phase III efficacy MAMS platform for Parkinson’s. HYDRA will be testing three potentially disease-modifying therapies for PD simultaneously.
Dr Emma Gray, PhD, is the Director of Research at the MS Society. Previously, Dr Gray worked at the MRC Centre for Neurodegeneration Research at King’s College London. Dr Gray and the MS Society have been fundamental in the ongoing Octopus trial: the first ever MAMS platform for progressive Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Based in the UK and run by a research team at UCL, this platform launched in April 2023 with the aim of finding treatments able to slow down disability progression in people with MS.
Kuhan Pushparatnam is a Parkinson’s advocate and member of EJS ACT-PD’s Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) working group. Diagnosed with young onset Parkinson’s at age 38, Kuhan now uses his experiences to help others. He is the co-host with Dave Clark of the ongoing podcast “2 Parkie’s in a Pod“. Kuhan has also recently developed the Parkinson’s ON app, which aims to help people with Parkinson’s better manage the condition.
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