Michael Fox and Partners plan to Start Nilotinib Study in 2017!

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

The Georgetown study results have finally been published.

Nilotinib Effects in Parkinson’s disease and Dementia with Lewy bodies - IOS Press (link is at the bottom of the abstract)

Leukemia drug increases brain dopamine, lowers toxic proteins linked to Parkinson's or dementia

Tasigna Prices and Tasigna Coupons - GoodRx

Patent expiration dates:

July 4, 2023
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Patent use: A METHOD FOR THE TREATMENT OF LEUKEMIAS
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Drug substance
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Drug product
Generic Tasigna Availability - Drugs.com

Here is the Parkinson's patent application:

TREATING NEURAL DISEASE WITH TYROSINE KINASE INHIBITORS - GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY

Keep in mind that these prices are for the CML dosage. The dosages that will be tested for PD are less, about a third of the amount. Also, there may be as many as 10 times more people with PD than CML. The larger market should allow Novartis to lower overall pricing, and certainly would position the insurance companies to force it. Finally, there is also some research going on now testing the drug for Alzheimer's, which, if successful, would widen the market dramatically.

In any case, we still have a long way to go before this gets an approval. Reading the actual study results leaves me at about a 50/50 chance. There definitely was some improvement with the volunteers, albeit it could be attributed to placebo. Some of the blood measure improvements may be harder to attribute to placebo. Unfortunately, it just wasn't that good of a study to draw many conclusions. My biggest concern is actually how fast the improvement came on, and then how fast it disappeared when the treatments stopped. This, along with the evidence of increased dopamine in the patients, leads me to think that the drug may have had a symptomatic impact, but not necessarily an interventional one. If that's the case, we may not want to take a somewhat dangerous cancer drug for the rest of our lives if only for symptomatic relief and not for slowing or halting progression.

It definitely will be interesting to see what more vigorous, controlled, trials will show. Particularly when the volunteers are early and mid-stage rather than the later-stage patients in the reported study

Great points Tupelo. The patent for use of Nilotinib for Parkinson's apparently was just allowed July 1, 2016 and shows use for Parkinson's, Huntington's, Alzheimer's etc. So it seems like there is a great opportunity for the owner to make a good $ which may mean that if this drug is viable it will be pushed through the system quickly! Sure Hope so!

TREATING NEURAL DISEASE WITH TYROSINE KINASE INHIBITORS - GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY

MJFF posted a blog yesterday on nilotinib and where the research stands on its use in Parkinson’s. The blog also discusses MJFF’s collaboration with the Van Andel Research Institute and Cure Parkinson’s Trust to advance the research and understanding of nilotinib.

MJFF is hosting a webinar to discuss nilotinib and answer questions on Tuesday, August 2 at 12 p.m. ET. You can register here.

Debi

Another clinical trial. Not great news for someone 13 years into PD and needs a caretaker. If I had PD, I would be taking 2 grams of curcumin daily until or if they ever come up with something a lot better than Sinemet.

Curcumin reduces alpha-synuclein induced cytotoxicity in Parkinson's disease cell model. - PubMed - NCBI

Here we show that curcumin can alleviate alphaS-induced toxicity, reduce ROS levels and protect cells against apoptosis. We also show that both intracellular overexpression of alphaS and extracellular addition of oligomeric alphaS increase ROS which induces apoptosis, suggesting that aggregated alphaS may induce similar toxic effects whether it is generated intra- or extracellulary.

http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijcb/2012/683097/

Curcumin-glucoside, A Novel Synthetic Derivative of Curcumin, Inhibits α-Synuclein Oligomer Formation: Relevance to Parkinson's Disease (PDF Download Available)

fyi
Parkinson's Disease (PD), Parkinson's Disease Dementia (PDD) & Prodromal PD