Parkinson's Disease Therapeutics Conference Information

This program seeks to advance therapeutic development through pre-clinical and/or clinical testing of approaches addressing unmet needs of people with Parkinson’s disease (PD). The program is set up to benefit therapeutics with clear potential to prevent, stop, or delay disease progression or to reduce the burden of daily symptoms.

Proposals are accepted year-round on a rolling basis. 

The Alzheimer’s Association and The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research are launching the Bridge Funding for Disrupted Neurodegenerative Research (BFDN) grant program.

The Edmond J. Safra Fellowship in Movement Disorders aims to grow the global base of movement disorder specialists — neurologists with additional training in Parkinson's disease and other movement disorders — by training movement disorder clinician-researchers who can provide expert care and lead scientific advances.

Released this week, the 2025 Parkinson's Biomarker report provides an overview of the Parkinson’s Disease (PD) biomarkers landscape, with a focus on biochemical and molecular based assays that MJFF staff is monitoring. It is intended to reflect biomarkers at various stages of development and validation for the indicated intended uses (e.g., diagnosis, monitoring, etc.)

This report tracks important therapies currently in clinical development for PD. It includes brief rationale and progress in key pipelines of therapeutic interest along with the development status of specific therapies. Where relevant, the report flags programs that have received financial or other significant enabling support from MJFF.

The Targets to Therapies Initiative aims to expand the number of promising, druggable biological targets within the Parkinson’s disease (PD) translational pipeline. We are currently collecting information on potential partners, and we look forward to leveraging the full expertise of our scientific community. Complete a short survey to express your interest in working with us on a specific target or targets. 

Join the Michael J. Fox Foundation for a virtual town hall on December 8th, 11am-1pm ET for a meeting focused on collaborative validation efforts for three key neuroinflammation targets in our de-risking initiative. ​

We will share validation strategies in greater detail, highlightthe identified research gaps, and outline related funding and collaboration opportunities​. 

The LRRK2 Investigative Therapeutics Exchange (LITE) program aims to support new approaches to targeting LRRK2 with therapies, while also supporting the development of LRRK2-relevant clinical biomarkers to measure progress.

Released in June 2025, this publication outlines how the Foundation’s T2T initiative narrowed nearly 300 nominated Parkinson’s targets to 21 prioritized for validation through a transparent, community-led process.

In 2010, The Michael J. Fox Foundation and a core group of academic scientists and industry partners launched the Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI) toward critically needed biological markers of Parkinson’s onset and progression. PPMI has since engaged thousands of partners — more sites; scientists and clinicians; industry experts; philanthropic partners; and, most importantly, study volunteers — to build a cornerstone of Parkinson’s research. Analysis from its open-access data set and available biosample library has deepened understanding of disease and informed the design of dozens of therapeutic trials.

In light of the breakthrough biomarker test that was validated in 2023, the alpha-synuclein seeding amplification assay (aSyn SAA), MJFF is investing heavily in validating quantitative biomarkers for PD. 

Parkinson's disease and dementia with Lewy bodies are currently defined by their clinical features, with α-synuclein pathology as the gold standard to establish the definitive diagnosis. We propose that, given biomarker advances enabling accurate detection of pathological α-synuclein (ie, misfolded and aggregated) in CSF using the seed amplification assay, it is time to redefine Parkinson's disease and dementia with Lewy bodies as neuronal α-synuclein disease rather than as clinical syndromes. This major shift from a clinical to a biological definition of Parkinson's disease and dementia with Lewy bodies takes advantage of the availability of tools to assess the gold standard for diagnosis of neuronal α-synuclein (n-αsyn) in human beings during life. 

The FDA issued a “Letter of Support” in late Summer 2024, following multi-stakeholder collaboration amongst The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF) and the Critical Path Institute (C-Path), with both organizations supporting use of the biomarker for clinical trials and advancing new drugs for Parkinson’s disease (PD).  

In the letter, the FDA emphasizes that their support stems from significant evidence collected as part of MJFF’s flagship Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI), which first validated the αSyn-SAA biomarker in April 2023.  This is only the second Letter of Support issued for PD markers. 

The Path to Prevention (P2P) platform trial is designed to catalyze clinical development for prodromal PD. P2P capitalizes on PPMI study infrastructure, expertise, and ongoing clinical and biomarker data collection to de-risk industry investments in pioneering therapies for individuals at risk of PD diagnosis.

To save Researchers time and resources, MJFF makes high-quality, validated tools available to the scientific community. As of today, we have 200 tools available and another 50+ in development, spanning the following tool types including, Antibodies, Assays, Cell Models, Chemical Probes, Proteins, Plasmids, Rodent Models, and Viral Vectors. 

We collaborate with the research community to collect and distribute a multitude of data resources for them to accelerate discovery and therapeutic development.

MJFF makes data and biospecimens available from select Parkinson's studies for discovery and validation research. 

MJFF invests in the infrastructure and resources to equip research teams with the tools to recruit and retain participants for their trials. 

The National Parkinson’s Project is a first-ever federal initiative to prevent and cure Parkinson’s disease, treat its symptoms and slow or stop its progression. Learn more how the Policy team is connecting with lawmakers to ensure a a country-wide strategy dedicated to ending Parkinson’s disease.