Trials of Parkinson’s vaccine show promise

The Michael J Fox Foundation reports that results from the first clinical trial of a new vaccine for Parkinson’s suggest the treatment is safe and should go forward to be tested in larger, longer studies. This small trial was carried out in the US on 40 healthy volunteers by biotech company Prothena.

Vaccines for Parkinson’s work by prompting the body to recognise alpha-synuclein as a foreign invader; this should trigger an immune response to clear some of the protein.

Results from this early trial show that the PRX002 vaccine is safe and may be able to decrease the level of alpha-synuclein in the blood.

This is the second vaccine that has been made against alpha-synuclein.
There have also been promising results from trials of another one being developed in Austria. For more details go to
Parkinson’s UK Research pages

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