Since its earliest days , The Michael J . Fox Foundation has been a field leader in the pursuit of Parkinson ’ s biomarkers — objective measures of disease risk or progression . Through varied funding and strategic initiatives , the Foundation has sought definitive diagnostics and clinical trial endpoints to speed development of promising new treatments .
The Foundation launched the Parkinson ’ s Progression Markers Initiative ( PPMI ) in 2010 to identify and validate measures of Parkinson ’ s disease .
Six years later , the landmark clinical study is at 33 clinical sites around the world , has enrolled 1,500 volunteers , generated a data set accessed by researchers over 1 million times and received nearly 100 applications from scientific teams worldwide for use of the study ’ s wellcharacterized biosamples .
Biotech and pharmaceutical companies increasingly look to PPMI as a model ; its protocol and evolving body of results assist neuroscience groups in designing studies , integrating state-of-the-art technologies , modeling outcomes , and gaining buy-in from senior leadership who routinely are called on to make difficult funding decisions .
The dataset is now included as a resource in large-scale projects such as the Critical Path for Parkinson ’ s Consortium , creating tools for optimized study design , and the planned National Institute of Health Accelerating Medicines Partnership - Parkinson ’ s Disease program toward biomarker discovery and novel target identification .
Research conducted using PPMI assets has contributed to greater understanding of cognitive and mood changes in Parkinson ’ s , helped establish a genetic risk profile that may form the basis of predicting who will get Parkinson ’ s and refined clinical scales to measure disease progression over time . In addition to these important results , PPMI has proved the feasibility of finding specific populations ( such as newly diagnosed or with genetic forms of PD ) and has been a pioneer in using tools such as social media to help speed up enrollment and cut costs in a multi-year study .
2016 Annual Report 21