Drug that Stops Progression of Parkinson's
 

http://www.disabled-world.com/disabi...rogression.php

Interesting article. What strikes me is that they are already testing it on humans. I wonder about the results. I have to admit though, that the med is not very practical. If it works, you need to take 32 tablets a day for neuroprotection. But if there are no extreme side-effects and it works ... why not ?

Anyway, the article is from 2011. And it states results would be published in a few months. We are now 1 year later. I didn't find any results. Also not on the website of the Michael J Fox foundation. It is really annoying to have no clue about such research that seems very promising in the beginning.

Thanks for this. It is good to know it was tested on people and it appears to be safe. I hope they find the money soon to start the next clinical phases.

I found these articles that seems to be follow-up published May 2012.

http://blog.cncahealth.com/post/2012...s-Disease.aspx

http://www.examiner.com/article/ucla...sease-research

Also one mentioning MJFF for funding some of the research
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...-lsl020712.php

try google with time limit 2012, not sure there is as much progress as hoped but things are moving. I'm not sure this is as inclusive as you wanted but research/academia moves slower than we'd like.

Dogma, very interesting articles. Especially the last one. That's some ground breaking result I would say. With this technique you can get any protein passed the BBB. Amazing. I read about something similar yesterday somewhere on http://www.parkinsons.org.uk/.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/20...56108.abstract

Is this the article? Interesting indeed.

found another MJFF ref
 

http://healthcarenewsblog.com/parkin...foxs-activism/

Loads more with google drug that stops the progression of parkinson's and limit to 2012 or last year with advanced search.

Dogma, this is not the article I mentioned. The article I mentioned is located somewhere on this site http://www.parkinsons.org.uk. It is some 2012 summer or spring or winter report. I would post the link but I just don't know where to find it anymore.

The article interviewed some researcher and asker her about what she thinks was the most promising yet found. She said that the alpha-synuclein path was one of the most remarkable things. But then she also started talking about something she was doing research on which was about a way to get proteins past the blood-brain barrier.

If I understood well the technique works by capturing the PD "curing" protein inside some closed sphere. The sphere hides the protein and is capable of entering the blood brain barrier. Once inside the brain, the protein is released and can start "curing" PD. This is really an important breakthough. Why ? For example, growth factors can't enter the blood brain barrier. With this technique it could enter very easily. So you wouldn't need these scary gene therapy technique in which they insert a needle in your brains and insert a virus. Also, researcher find many proteins and molecules that show they slow down or cure PD in animals but that are useless for people because the products don't cross the blood brain barrier. This is what happens with curcumin. So what researcher do next is try to modify these products so they do enter the brain barrier. But this is time consuming and slows down the cure. With this new technique you can get anything in the brain which speeds up the quest to find the cure. So I am very delighted about this research.

UPDATA: I found the article ... p. 14-15 of http://www.parkinsons.org.uk/pdf/Pro...winter2012.pdf This researcher will test exosomes to deliver meds to the brain. So it is still in the research phase and not yet proven to work well.

Interesting article again. But my initial question was not about products that stops progression of PD. If you read the article I initially posted you will see that they found that some existing medecin (I think for leukemia) can change the expression of the DJ-1 gene. They tested this on mice and showed that it stopped/slowed down PD. They concluded they were going to test this on people and I was just wondering if they are already doing clinical trials on people because I didn't seem to find anything of this online.

you can always contact the author(s) of the paper or researcher via email,
i find that they usually respond.

Thanks for the tip.

This is all rather encouraging but I must caution that any time you read of a novel new treatment involving a particular gene and they extrapolate that into a potential new therapy for all of us with PD, that is not possible. They are assuming one genetic mutation is the model for all with PD. This sadly is not the case; has many different pathways and all we share in common is symptom cluster. The articles are misleading and usually there is disclaimer hidden amidst all the hype. For example, at the DDN site you will find the sentence:

However, the key is early diagnosis or knowledge of a genetic predisposition to the disease, says Freed.


Since they can't be bothered with those of us who do not have parents or sibs with PD to run genetic tests, it means very little to most of us.

Not all of us have alpha-syn aggregation. Frankly, specialists cannot even define what PD is now that our Hallmark Lewy Body is not toxic. Hate to be a downer, but all this genetic mutation based potential "cures" do not address the hard fact that scientists cannot even reach a consensus on what PD is.
How can they cure us, when they ignore defining what they are dealing with?

Laura

I know. I contacted the professor yesterday and asked him whether his results are promising for everyone or just a small subset of people with DJ-1 gene problem.

You say alpha-synuclein is not present in all PD patients ? A few days ago I thought I read somewhere that more than 80 % of PD patients have problems with alpha-synuclein.

Diego,

Mere speculation. Unless something has profound has occurred, no standard measure exists for living patient, and the old standara of Lewy bodies upon autopsy mean nothing anymore. Did your source reveal how that 80% was arrived at? I may have missed something. I would love it if they had a valid and reliable measure in place.

Relying on Lewy Body formation as an alpha-syn measure is now what I would call bad science. Again there are people who have brains riddled with these clumps and never a tremor. We also have a genetic young onset PD with Park2 mutation that do not accumulate Lewy Bodies which are part of the aftermath of alpha-syn aggregation, toxicity, and neuronal death. Yet they look very much Parkinsonian; many of us with YOPD may have such a mutation but would never know it because those of us without a direct relative with PD are ignored by research. Never mind that only a tiny fraction of genetic PD cases (20 % over all) follow the classic Mendelian inheritance model.

This is why I get so annoyed by PD research. On the one hand they are saying that so few people have genetic mutations, so the vast majority of us are not worth testing. On the other hand, they will take a study like the one on DJ-1 and promote with abandon as a breakthrough for all of us. Just a wee bit of a problem, I find.

I have researched PD exhaustively for three years and decided that if they really had more heart in it and less ego we wouldn't be having this exchange right now. The CDC has no epidemiological data on neurodegenerative disease. Why is that? By keeping us ill and feeding us hope, we are the bread and butter of an industry. This is not a conspiracy theory, but the hard truth that in a Capitalist economy, disease is a commodity.

BTW, you are waiting on the researcher's reply?

Conductor71, unfortunately the researcher still didn't reply.

I don't know anymore where I read this. But I found this new one, for example: http://www.hindawi.com/journals/pd/2012/614212/

I am not saying all PD is caused by a-synuclein. But given all research I read, I do have the feeling that majority of PD is caused by a-synuclein. Of course, my opinion is based on current result. If current is wrong, so will be my opinion.

A week or 2 later ... still no reply. This professor is really an idiot. I have also been working in the academic world and whenever people contacted me about my research I always replied them. I wonder how people can be like this.