Following encouraging results recently published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation describing the progress of a cohort of patients treated with Exenatide for their Parkinson’s disease (PD), The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research has awarded a grant of $1.98 million to Dr. T Foltynie to pursue this avenue of research. Exenatide is a licensed drug for the treatment of type 2 diabetes and seems to exert neuro-protective properties when tested in the laboratory. This award will allow Dr. Foltynie to perform a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of Exenatide, self-administered by patients by subcutaneous injection, over a 12 month period at the UCL Institute of Neurology.
Patients will have serial clinical assessments together with brain imaging and collection of biological samples to gain further insight regarding the safety and tolerability of the drug in patients with PD, as well as to explore further possible neuro-protective effects and learn about possible mechanisms through which the drug acts in the brain.
For further details see the Michael J. Fox web pages.