Parkinson’s Vaccine – Worldwide First Clinical Study in Vienna

http://www.affiris.com/html/en/press...meldungen.html

AFFiRiS AG announced today the start of the Phase I study of its Parkinson’s vaccine candidate PD01A.

Vienna (Austria), 5. June 2012. The worldwide first clinical trial for the development of a Parkinson’s vaccine has now been started by AFFiRiS AG. The vaccine called PD01A is directed against alpha-Synuclein, a protein considered causing the onset and progression of the disease, and is currently being tested on Parkinson’s patients in a Phase I trial. The vaccine holds out the prospect to deliver a causative treatment of Parkinsons for the first time. Its potential for success prompted the US-American Michael J. Fox Foundation to generously support the development of PD01A financially. Taking place in Vienna and involving up to 32 patients, the primary endpoints of the trial are safety and tolerability of PD01A....

I think all these trials of meds targeting alpha-synuclein will provide a major breakthroug in combatting PD. You can find a list of these meds in http://www.michaeljfox.org/docs/bw_book.pdf. In this PDF you can find an overview of all meds in the pipeline clearly indicating what each med is targeting.

I read that clinical studies for Alzheimer have shown very promising results, though no statistical significant conclusion can be made because the tests were performed on a small group.

I have a question though ... does anyone know where the vaccin is inserted ? Is this a needle in your arm or does it go straight in your brain ?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2825665/

I found something about a past vaccine for AD. The trial was stopped because of severe side effects on many patients. But 20 % of them responded well and did have antibodies attacking the neuro-killing protein. 5 years later results apparently do indicate disease progression was slowed down. Progression would probably have been slowed down even more if people would have received a vaccine more often because after 5 years the level of antibodies was low. Even though this result was on AD and not on PD, I think the PD community can have high hopes on the PD vaccine.

What do you guys think of this vaccine ? I can't wait for this one to get into clinical phase: http://app1.unmc.edu/publicaffairs/t...cfm?match=6638

I have been stalking this one. lol This news release was around the same time a Affiris' announcement on their trials in Austria. I haven't seen any updates, so I worry about lack of funding or patent issues. Might be worth bothering them with an email to ask and remind them we are all here waiting...not so patiently.

Laura

This is the latest news I found about the guy that worked on the vaccine: http://www.michaeljfox.org/research_...s_3.cfm?ID=693

Thanks for this! I firmly believe that our immune system is front and center in this whole mess. I am utterly stunned that in over 40 years of research no one has systematically and thoroughly studied PD as an auto-immune disorder. Time and again, patients in research are found to have anti-bodies to a-syn and basal ganglia neurons. Many of us end up with or have other auto-immune disorders.

Makes you wonder, doesn't it? We desperately need to see more meta research done. I think we have what we need but no one is looking at how to put it all together.