Interview: Roger Barker, pd research, interesting opinions on current research
 

http://www.journalofparkinsonsdiseas...ts_Corner.html

first few paragraphs:

Roger Barker says that he was inspired to become a clinician researcher after meeting the great neuroscientist David Marsden. As Barker puts it, “the minute I met David Marsden I wanted to be David Marsden, a person equally at home in the clinic and the laboratory”. When I visited the 51-year-old Parkinson’s and Huntington’s researcher during a recent visit to the UK, he seemed to be well on his way to accomplishing that goal.


Barker appears to speak with a faux Australian accent. He is in fact solidly British. After getting a First at Oxford, he attended St Thomas’s Hospital, did a PhD in Cambridge (on neural grafting), received neurological training at Queens Square, before settling at The John van Geest Centre for Brain Repair in Cambridge. The CBR is tucked away in a corner of the Addenbrooke's Hospital campus. Inside the modern two-storey building, posters line the walls announcing scientific speakers from elite institutions like Harvard and MIT. Bright young researchers from all over world congregate in the coffee lounge to socialize in Italian, Japanese, Portuguese and French. This is what a hot center of neuroscience looks like. This is Roger Barker’s world.


Barker is a provocative figure. A leading player in the TRANSEURO neural grafting project, he is known for his critiques of current clinical research methods, in particular the hegemony of placebo-controlled trials. He had just co-authored a commentary in the Journal of Clinical Investigation about the “repurposing” of an injectable diabetes drug called Exenatide for Parkinson’s disease. Its efficacy was studied using an open label trial design.