A Scottish company, Parkure, part of the Edinburgh Science Triangle collaboration, is looking to raise a total of £100,000 from crowdfunding to help find a cure for Parkinson’s, which affects an estimated 127,000 people in the UK. It is hoped that additional funds will come from private equity investors.
It will be the first time in Scotland that crowdfunding has been used to help fund drug discovery research, and the first crowdfunding attempt worldwide to find a cure for Parkinson’s disease. The campaign is being led by Parkure’s chief executive, Dr Lysimachos Zografos, 32, an Athens-born research associate at the University of Edinburgh.
Zografos and his team hope to use large numbers of fruit flies to fast track trials with a number of drugs already on the market to treat other diseases.
Edinburgh Science Triangle, a collaboration of seven science parks, four universities and two agritech institutes around Edinburgh and Midlothian, is providing marketing support to help Parkure with the fundraising campaign. Forming one of Europe’s top ten research and development locations, Edinburgh Science Triangle is home to more than 3,000 researchers with particular strengths in human and animal health, including the University of Edinburgh’s world-renowned Medical School at Edinburgh BioQuarter and Roslin BioCentre, a world-leading centre of excellence for life sciences.