Back to What Researchers Say About MJFF

Todd Sherer, PhD - Bio

A lot of factors went into my decision to join The Michael J. Fox Foundation, but one of the most important was wanting to be involved in research that would have real results for patients. I was a Fox Fellow before I joined the Foundation’s Research staff, and I was impressed from my earliest interactions with MJFF by its plan, its strategy, and its patient-oriented perspective.

All of us at the Foundation, and our advisors, feel urgent about our mission. That’s why we’re so responsive, which is something I think researchers appreciate about working with us. If an important new idea comes along, people know that MJFF will announce a related action step very soon. That’s unusual in science.

We’re never stuck on one just one particular approach. We’re constantly fine-tuning and trying new things. We want to reward great scientists for doing truly patient-relevant research.

 People often ask me what I’m most excited about. I have a lot of answers because we’re doing so much exciting work, but I’d say I feel most optimistic just thinking about how far the field has come since I was working in the lab. Today we have so many promising new avenues for investigation, new targets for therapies, rapidly advancing technologies — crucial tools for progress that we didn’t know about, or that didn’t exist, 10 years ago. There is a lot of promise.