New treatments for Parkinson's disease. How inhibiting the activity of a specific protein in the brain could stop or slow the disease.

[emmemi]

The c-Abl inhibitor, Nilotinib, protects dopaminergic neurons in a preclinical animal model of Parkinson's disease

nature.com/articles/srep04874

[FMundo]

Thank you for posting the link to this research article. Unfortunately I am not a neuroscientist nor am I a physician. Would there, perhaps, be anyone out there capable of summarizing this article into a language that laypersons could understand?

A year ago Nilotinib was hyped in the press (around a dozen articles) as having the ability to stop the progression of PD (and actually significantly roll back symptoms in 11 of the 12 patients who participated in a clinical trial (for "safety" not "efficacy"). People who had become incapable of speech were speaking, mobility was improved. The drug manufacturer is Novartis and it is available (FDA approved for treating cancer in significantly higher doses than were used in the clinical trial).

Of course, you'd have to be a Rockefeller or Dupont to be able to afford the drug... were you to find a physician will to prescribe the drug "off label". But there are those people . . . who have the resources and are willing to take the drug. I don't recall that there were any serious side effects reported . . .

I have not heard of any further Clinical Trials with this drug. Since quite a few people have PD ... one would have thought there would be interest in conducting further Clinical Trials....

[Donzim in reply to FMundo]

i have the same questions. i don't know that the second study is not in the works. it takes a while plus funding to get a study going. i even emailed the woman in charge of the original study but she was out of the office and never responded to my email asking about the status.

[jeffreyn in reply to FMundo]

If I'm reading correctly the following article from Georgetown, the next phase of the PD trial is currently in the stage of seeking funding. Ditto for the AD trial.

gumc.georgetown.edu/magazin...

[FMundo]

Heck.... why rush testing a drug ! Well I have answer:

Since people are reliably and inevitably dying after being diagnosed with Parkinsons... and Nilotinib has been shown (admittedly in a small sample) to be safe and to reduce Parkinsons symptoms, why not allow people with PD to take the drug, while researchers, scientists and businessmen at Novartis sit around and study their navels... or whatever else they are doing... while those of us with PD expire ? Folks... "time is a-wasting here!"

It escapes me why there is delay on this... for funding of clinical tests of all things! If Nilotinib has efficacy in treating PD, as initial tests have shown ... then Novartis may, figuratively speaking, be sitting on a goldmine. Now I may be missing something here. Novartis is charging the earth to cancer patients for concentrated amounts of the drug - perhaps that figures into their strategy in some way. Any MD's have thoughts on this?