Double your impact for people living with Parkinson’s

We’re delighted to have taken part once again in the Big Give Christmas Challenge, the UK’s biggest match-funding campaign. For one week only, every donation you made through the Big Give website was doubled, meaning your support went twice as far in the search for a cure.

If you donated via the Big Give in 2025, your gift was doubled, achieving twice the impact. Together, thanks to your generosity, we raised an incredible £134,193 to help fund EJS ACT-PD, the world’s largest clinical trial for Parkinson’s – thank you! Learn more about the challenge below.

What is the Big Give?

The Big Give Christmas Challenge brings together charities, match funders and the public to make an incredible difference each year. For seven days, every pound donated via the Big Give platform is matched, turning £20 into £40, £50 into £100, and so on, until the match pot runs out.

It’s a powerful way to make your generosity go further and help accelerate breakthroughs in Parkinson’s research.

This year’s campaign ran from midday Tuesday 2 December to midday Tuesday 9 December.

During that week, all donations made through the Big Give to Cure Parkinson’s were matched, doubling the impact of a donation.

The Big Give – Find out More

EJS ACT-PD: The world’s largest clinical trial for Parkinson’s

This year’s Big Give supported EJS ACT-PD, a pioneering new platform trial testing multiple potential Parkinson’s treatments at once.

Traditionally, every time a new drug can be tested, a clinical trial must be developed from scratch (protocol, infrastructure, recruitment, and funding). It is comparable to building a football stadium, playing a single game, and then dismantling the stadium, only to restart the process for each trial.

What’s needed is a smarter approach: EJS ACT-PD is the first multi-arm multi-stage (MAMS) clinical trial platform for Parkinson’s in the UK – and the world’s largest clinical trial for Parkinson’s.

Multi-arm multi-stage platform trials allow for the assessment of several potential therapies simultaneously against a single placebo, reusing the same infrastructure to increase the pace of scientific progress.

It’s faster, more efficient, and could transform the future of Parkinson’s research.

Ultimately, the launch of the platform represents a leap forward in our goal of finding a therapy able to slow, stop, or reverse Parkinson’s progression.

The first phase of the trial will involve 1,600 people living with Parkinson’s, with over 40 sites opening across England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. This means there’s more opportunity than ever before for people with Parkinson’s to participate in clinical research.

This year, thanks to our incredibly generous match funders, Cure Parkinson’s supporter Andrew Moncreiff and Michael Strong, we surpassed our target of £120,000, raising an incredible £134,193!

Thank you to all our amazing funders and supporters!

Stay in the loop

Stay in touch about the latest news from Cure Parkinson’s.

This clinical trial is led by University College London and is funded by a Medical Research Council (MRC) and National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) partnership, Cure Parkinson’s, The Michael J Fox Foundation, Parkinson’s UK, The John Black Charitable Foundation, The Gatsby Charitable Foundation and Van Andel Institute.

Related content