Parkinson’s disease is the world’s fastest growing neurological disorder and already affects over 1.2 million people in Europe. Up to 80% of Parkinson's patients will develop dementia, significantly impacting their quality of life, increasing caregiver burden, and driving up healthcare costs. As Parkinson's disease progressively damages and destroys brain cells, symptoms worsen over time. The rate at which dementia develops can vary greatly, leaving patients and their families uncertain about the future. Currently, no diagnostic tests can reliably predict which Parkinson's patients are at risk of developing dementia, and there is no cure.
This project's goal is to develop a biomarker panel to help physicians identify Parkinson's patients at high risk of developing dementia. Achieving this is crucial for enhancing individualized patient care and for the targeted recruitment of at-risk patients into clinical trials aimed at preventing dementia.
We have brought together international groups that have followed patients from the onset of Parkinson's disease through to the development of dementia. These teams have generated detailed clinical datasets and collected extensive biological samples, creating a unique opportunity for critical biomarker research. Using this resource combined with innovative approaches and advanced statistical analyses, we have begun identifying key genetic and protein biomarkers associated with dementia in Parkinson's disease.
The main outcome of this project will represent a significant advancement in the field, providing a clinically useful biomarker panel to identify Parkinson's patients at risk of dementia. This will improve individual healthcare, enable early disease intervention, facilitate targeted clinical trial enrolment, and potentially reduce healthcare costs.
The ParkDem project has produced significant outcomes with impacts on clinical research, healthcare, and biotechnology.
Actual Outcomes within the timeframe of the project:
- Biomarker Development: We have identified and validated several genetic, clinical, and biochemical biomarkers that improve the prediction of PDD risk. Notably, the GCase activity assay and the Alpha-synuclein seeding aggregation assay (SAA) have advanced our understanding of PDD pathophysiology and provided tools that can be integrated into clinical practice and clinical trials, while novel genetic markers open new avenues for research.
- Collaborations and Data Sharing: The creation of the Parkinson's Incidence Cohorts Collaboration (PICC) dataset has provided a foundation for large-scale, longitudinal research efforts and initiated new projects in Norway, Sweden, and the UK.
- Clinical trials: The biomarkers identified through the ParkDem project are already being utilized in clinical trials. These biomarkers can improve trial outcomes, ultimately accelerating the development of disease-modifying therapies.
Potential Impacts:
- Commercialization and Industry Impact: The patented SAA method and other assay developments open avenues for commercial applications in diagnostics and therapeutics, potentially leading to new products and services that benefit patients and healthcare providers.
- Healthcare Improvements: The biomarker panel developed through this project has the potential to enhance early diagnosis and management of PDD, reducing the burden on patients, caregivers, and healthcare systems. Our collaboration with the industry is key to bringing the biomarkers to the clinic.
Parkinson's disease (PD) is a chronic, progressive movement disorder, and is the world's fastest growing neurological disorder, with the number of people living with PD projected to increase to 12.9 million by 2040. Up to 80% of PD patients will develop dementia (PDD), which severely affects patients' quality of life, caregiver burden and health care costs. At present, there are no diagnostic tests and no treatment strategies to prevent PDD, and the increasing global disease burden threatens a public health crisis.
The goal of this innovative project is to develop a biomarker panel that can help physicians to identify PD patients who are at high risk of developing dementia. This knowledge is crucial for early disease intervention, improved and more individualised patient care, and targeted enrolment of at-risk patients into clinical trials to test drugs to prevent PDD. To achieve our goal, we will bring together nine international, state-of-the-art longitudinal cohort studies. These studies have followed PD patients from diagnosis for up to 16 years, and have generated rich clinical data sets and enormous collections of biological samples, which creates a unique opportunity to do vital clinical, biological and imaging biomarker research. Major knowledge gains will be made from the cross-cohort analysis of existing data, and cutting-edge expertise from the team will be used to identify new biomarkers of disease progression. The project team is highly multidisciplinary and includes extensive regional and world-leading international experts from "bed-to-bedside", making the project highly achievable within the timeframe.
The main result of this project will mark a major advance in the field by establishing a panel of clinically useful prognostic biomarkers to identify individuals at risk of PDD, which will lead to improvements in individual healthcare and clinical trial design, as well as reduced health care costs.
