That's great Will, glad to hear that. Yes, Penn will be one of the trial locations. It's good that you told him of your interest now as there isn't going to be that many available slots at each location. 75 total for 25 sites.

I wanted to share more information on the new Phase IIa clinical trial funded by our Foundation (MJFF) to test the safety and tolerability of nilotinib in Parkinson’s disease. The trial will investigate the potential of repurposing nilotinib (which many in the patient community know is an FDA-approved treatment for cancer of the white blood cells) in Parkinson’s disease.

You can read more details on the nilotinib trial on our blog and download our guide on what patients and families should know about repurposed therapies.

-Debi

Thanks Debi!


Link to full press release:


Michael J. Fox Foundation Announces Award to Drive Phase IIa Clinical Trial Investigating Potential Safety and Benefit of Nilotinib in Parkinson's Disease | Parkinson's Disease

The SoPD blog has just posted an article covering the two nilotinib phase II trials (i.e. Georgetown Uni. and MJFF et al.). The article includes a lot of background information, plus links to papers/articles containing further information.

Nilotinib: the other phase II trial | The Science of Parkinson's disease

The Georgetown study will recruit 75 subjects and will be completed in July 2020.

re: "will be completed in July 2020"

I noticed that too, and it's a similar end-date for the MJFF et al. trial.

Maybe it's based on an expected slow recruitment process? All the more reason to get these announcements and articles spread around the PwP communities and forums.

The trial timeline projects a 6 month recruitment time for each Cohort, which is fairly standard for a 75 member study. In actuality, the expectation is that it should be faster, not slower. This is due to several factors, most notably the significant amount of publicity associated with the drug and the trial. Also, as opposed to the GU trial, there will be 25 site locations across the U.S. So, each site only needs to average 3 volunteers. The main factor for the the three year timeline is that this is actually two separate trials with Cohort 1 (moderately advanced patients) and Cohort 2 (recently DXed patients). Cohort 1 is for 6 months and Cohort 2, which will begin after the first one is completed, is for 12 months. With statistical analysis and recruitment time, that all adds up to about 3 years.

I do agree, we should all get the word out about the upcoming trial recruitment and cut the 6 month time down to one month. If that happens with both cohorts we can cut almost a year off of the study time.

Excellent review!