Drug Repositioning Congress - Washington, DC

Isradipine. Pioglitazone. Droxidopa.  What do these drugs have in common? They are all approved for other indications and are currently undergoing clinical testing for Parkinson’s disease (PD).   There is currently no disease-modifying therapy that can slow, stop or reverse the underlying progressive disease process in PD.  It is estimated that any such therapeutic could take over a decade to develop and over $1.0 billion in research and time costs.  Due to the significant challenges in CNS drug development in general and PD development in particular, innovative approaches such as drug repositioning allow for opportunistic strategy to reduce cost, mitigate risk and accelerate time to get the treatment to the market.  This talk will describe the aggressive research initiatives undertaken by The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF) including identifying and funding repositioning of clinically safe compounds from other indications to PD.  This talk will describe the process by which MJFF has funded pre-clinical and clinical projects at critical junctures, promoting research at key translational points, to “de-risk” PD research with the goal of developing improved treatments and ultimately a cure for PD.

Authors: Kuldip Dave