The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) announced this week an $8 million, five-year grant to support a "National Brain and Tissue Resource for Parkinson's Disease and Related Disorders", awarded to Banner Sun Health Research Institute (BSHRI) and Mayo Clinic Arizona. Dr. Thomas Beach, MD, PhD of BSHRI is principal investigator and heads the neuropathology operations for the project, while Dr. Charles Adler, MD, PhD of the Mayo Clinic is co-investigator and directs the clinical aspects. Both are also currently co-principal investigators of the Arizona Parkinson's Disease Consortium (APDC), which has been funded by the Arizona Biomedical Research Commission, Arizona Department of Health Services and The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research (MJFF).
Parkinson's disease (PD) is currently diagnosed clinically by finding slowness of movement, resting tremor, or rigidity. However, the only way to definitively diagnose PD is by autopsy. In addition to being a disorder of movement, 30 to 75 percent of patients with PD develop dementia, which can be disabling. While there are treatments (medications and surgical procedures) that improve the motor symptoms, there are no treatments that slow or halt disease progression or prevent dementia in PD.
The NINDS award will fund studies of Arizonans with Parkinson's disease as well as normal-aging individuals, collecting information from clinical research testing on a yearly basis and then performing an autopsy to study the brain and other bodily tissue. The tissue is considered especially valuable to researchers due both to the intensive clinical studies during life as well as the high quality of the brain tissue, which is collected very quickly after death by autopsy teams that respond around the clock.
"We are grateful to the contributions of the NINDS which allow us the ability to continue our one-of-a-kind science. Our unique resource will continue to be at the forefront of major discoveries in Parkinson's disease research," said Beach.
Unfortunately, the underlying cause of PD and of dementia in PD is unknown. Under the leadership of Drs. Beach and Adler, the APDC has recently contributed to major advances in the study of Parkinson's disease and related disorders, by providing an improved disease classification system, a better understanding of the molecular basis of the disease, tissue-based diagnostic strategies, and methods to predict disease risk in the normal population.
One major goal of the funding is to find the earliest clinical markers for the onset of PD and for the onset of dementia in people with PD, so that studies of treatments to slow or stop these disorders can be started earlier. A critical feature of this ground-breaking program is the confirmation of the clinical diagnosis through autopsy. "This grant will go a long way to advance our understanding of the clinical aspects of Parkinson's disease and assist us in developing specific new treatments," added Adler.
"One of our Foundation's priorities is to better understand the onset and progression of Parkinson's disease," said Todd Sherer, PhD, CEO of MJFF. "The robust nature of APDC's clinical data provides great potential for doing that, which could speed progress toward new therapies for PD."
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