In June, Cure Parkinson’s convened a workshop of researchers, organisations and individuals in the Parkinson’s community to focus on developing combination therapies. This informed the £2m funding call that we are announcing today that will open in October 2025.

Currently, clinical trials for Parkinson’s have largely focussed on testing single drugs, or monotherapies, for their disease-modifying potential. Although the clinical testing of monotherapies remains important, it is recognised that, due to the number of biological drivers that can cause Parkinson’s, the condition may ultimately need to be treated with several drugs.

We want all researchers to give same conisderation to combination therapies as they currently do to monotherapies.

Therefore, Cure Parkinson’s is championing the testing of combinations of drugs with the hope of increasing the odds in our favour for identifying disease-modifying therapies more quickly. Cure Parkinson’s aim to encourage researchers to think about, and test, drug combinations earlier in the drug discovery process.   

We are therefore launching a £2 million funding call in October 2025 to test rationally designed combination therapies for disease modification in Parkinson’s.

This new £2 million funding call for combination therapies is in addition to Cure Parkinson’s standard Quarterly Research Grant Funding Programme and is made possible by a generous donation received last year. 

Funding will be available for both clinical trials and preclinical studies, with the call maintaining our focussed funding remit of projects being of a potentially disease-modifying nature. Furthermore, for preclinical projects, Cure Parkinson’s will prioritise those that are within five years of clinical testing in people with Parkinson’s. 

Further information, including details of how to apply for this new fund, will be published on our website.

“Today I am delighted to announce a £2 million funding call that will open in October to test rationally designed combination therapies to impact the progression of Parkinson’s.  By encouraging researchers to consider combination therapies we hope to tackle Parkinson’s from two or more different angles and have a greater impact on progression of the condition.” – Helen Matthews, CEO, Cure Parkinson’s

“People with Parkinson’s know that we are all different, almost unique in our clinical presentation. It’s increasingly clear that we are different biologically. It is therefore a challenge to expect therapies that are focused on one agent with one mechanism of action to work optimally for everyone. That’s why it’s time to open a new front in the war against Parkinson’s with new and exciting combination therapies.” – Dr Kevin McFarthing, biochemist living with Parkinson’s

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