NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – KineMed today reported the Michael J. Fox Foundation has awarded it an additional $1.2 million to continue development of kinetic biomarkers for Parkinson's disease.
The biomarkers are being developed for use by drug companies to accelerate the development of treatments for the ailment and to reduce the cost of clinical trials for treatments.
KineMed is developing biomarkers to monitor disease progression and regression, and the foundation previously funded the Emeryville, Calif.-based company's pathway-based biomarker study of neuronal function, which measured differences in brain neuronal transport function in patients with Parkinson's.
According to Mark Frasier, vice president of research programs for the foundation, KineMed will conduct a cross-section study to confirm the biomarker data it has generated.
"The current difficulty in advancing a cure is the pharmaceutical industry's challenge to appraise the myriad proposed treatment strategies in concise, cost-effective trials," Patrizia Fanara, vice president of neuroscience for KineMed, said in a statement. "Our cerebrospinal fluid kinetic biomarkers measure the rate of neurodegeneration in PD patients within weeks, much sooner than any visible effect in disease progression. These fast readouts are stronger and more actionable, so can help companies decide quickly whether or not a drug is working and which patient is responding."