New funding opportunity: Combination therapies for Parkinson’s
Cure Parkinson’s is excited to announce that we are now accepting expressions of interest for our new combination therapy funding call.
In August, Cure Parkinson’s announced we would be opening a £2 million funding call later this year to encourage the testing of combination therapies for Parkinson’s. From now until 24 November, we are welcoming expressions of interest from researchers around the globe to test rationally designed combinations of two or more drugs with disease-modifying potential for Parkinson’s.
Why combination therapies?
A combination therapy is a treatment that involves two or more active agents to achieve the desired effect. These drugs may target separate pathways, or one may be used to enhance the effectiveness of the other.
Currently, clinical trials of potentially disease-modifying treatments for Parkinson’s are largely focused on the testing of single drugs (called monotherapies). These drugs often target a specific biological pathway associated with Parkinson’s progression, such as the build-up of the protein alpha-synuclein. We know, however, there are many pathways that interact and contribute to the loss of nerve cells (neurons) in Parkinson’s. Therefore, although the clinical testing of single drugs remains important, finding a disease-modifying treatment may ultimately require a combination of treatments.
How does this funding call work?
Cure Parkinson’s is seeking to fund both preclinical and clinical projects that involve combinations of two or more potentially disease-modifying drugs for Parkinson’s. Researchers interested in applying will need to submit an expression of interest by 24 November to be considered. These will be reviewed internally, and those within our funding remit will be invited to submit a full application.
Applications to our other funding programmes are evaluated by our Research Committee; however, for the purposes of this funding call, Cure Parkinson’s will be convening a separate, independent panel of individuals with specific expertise relevant to the design and clinical testing of combination therapies to review applications. We are delighted to announce that this panel will be chaired by Professor Fiona Ducotterd, Chief Scientific Officer of the Alzheimer’s Research UK UCL Drug Discovery Institute.
Why is this important?
Our goal is to find disease-modifying treatments with urgency – an important aspect of accelerating this process is identifying therapies with the greatest chance of success. Combination therapies represent an additional avenue worth exploring, which is why Cure Parkinson’s feels it is important to support this research. Additionally, many drugs that have failed in late-stage clinical trials may still have potential and re-evaluating them within a combination approach could hold the key to their success.
Parkinson’s is a complex condition and people with Parkinson’s experience a wide range of symptoms that vary from person to person. We know that there are a variety of different biological drivers that potentially influence Parkinson’s, and so the aim of this funding call is to increase the odds in our favour for identifying a disease-modifying therapy for Parkinson’s by targeting different aspects of the condition. We hope that this will pave the way for future success and help us to find a cure more quickly.
Dr Simon Stott, Director of Research, Cure Parkinson’s
