Objective:
This program supports research that deepens understanding of how specific components of the immune system contribute to Parkinson’s disease risk, onset and progression. The goal is to pinpoint immune cell populations, signaling pathways and functional states that change throughout the Parkinson's continuum. The program also seeks to understand how these immune features connect to clinical outcomes and disease progression, driving future therapeutic targeting and patient selection for future clinical studies.
MJFF will prioritize proposals that:
Use validated immunophenotyping and functional assays on banked biosamples (e.g., PBMCs, CSF-derived cells, GI immune cells) to generate mechanistic, hypothesis-driven data clarifying immune involvement in PD risk, onset or progression.
Leverage and strengthen collaborations that enable access to diverse, well-characterized PD cohorts (genetic, idiopathic, prodromal/at-risk), utilizing existing clinical, genetic and longitudinal data where possible to study immune differences across subtypes and stages.
Integrate immune functional readouts with existing data from established and emerging PD biomarkers or other immune data (such as TSPO imaging, cytokine measurements), aiming to correlate immune signatures with molecular, pathological, or clinical markers to identify immune features linked to disease heterogeneity, progression or patient stratification.
MJFF will not consider proposals focused on:
Developing new immunophenotyping platforms.
Discovery-driven efforts (e.g. ‘omics) without an underlying hypothesis.
Prospective sample collection.
Generation of new imaging or digital endpoint data.
Solely assessing post-mortem autopsy samples or iPSCs.
Cytokine profiling in biofluids (unless correlating existing cytokine data with other immune readouts).
Immune profiling in non-PD cohorts.
Analysis of existing immune datasets (though future opportunities may be available; contact grants@michaeljfox.org)