This is great news folks!

Nilotinib Update: Where We Stand with a Cancer Drug for Parkinson’s

Posted by Maggie McGuire Kuhl, July 12, 2016

A promising therapy that may slow or stop Parkinson’s progression is moving forward. Today The Michael J. Fox Foundation (MJFF), the Van Andel Research Institute (VARI) in Michigan and the Cure Parkinson’s Trust (CPT) in the United Kingdom announced plans to collaborate to assess the clinical use and development of cancer drug nilotinib.

The program includes the goal of planning of a double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial of nilotinib, which MJFF hopes can begin in 2017.

Parkinson's Disease | Nilotinib Update: Where We Stand with a Cancer Drug for Parkinson’s

Yes, zanpar, this is really good news. It took some time, and some pressure, but we've finally gotten the big guns to realize that this study needed to get done. The science makes sense, the pre-clinical trials have all been successful, the recent research on c-abl and TKIs, and the Georgetown proof-of-concept trial all support the need for further investigation of Nilotinib in a controlled clinical trial.

Coincidentally, the Georgetown study results were finally published today. See my post on that thread for the publication link.

Also, the team at Georgetown still intends to conduct their own Nilotinib phase 2 trials. It will probably begin before the MJFF study and both will be conducted simultaneously.

"Our hope is to clarify the benefits of nilotinib to patients in a much larger and well controlled study. This was a very promising start," Moussa says. "If these data hold out in further studies, nilotinib would be the most important treatment for Parkinsonism since the discovery of Levodopa almost 50 years ago."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...0712101230.htm

This may be good news too soon.

http://content.iospress.com/download...se%2Fjpd160904

Below is a link to the Georgetown study published July 11, 2016. The first study was a safety study so naturally the next step is the double blinded study which is what The Fox Foundation and partners are planning to start in 2017! I'm hoping the Georgetown folks will also do a double blind study as well. Also it seems likely that the UK based Cure Parkinsons Trust will study this on their side of the ocean so we should have ample study results around the world to determine if the Nilotinib direction will be useful to be a real game changer in treating PD!

Nilotinib Effects in Parkinson’s disease and Dementia with Lewy bodies - IOS Press

The MJFF blog on nilotinib can be found here.

MJFF is also hosting a webinar to discuss nilotinib and answer questions about it and the recently published research results on Tuesday, August 2 at 12 p.m. ET. You can register here.

Debi