What You Should Know:
– Verily, an Alphabet company focused on health data platforms and AI, today announced it has received a significant $14.7M grant from The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF).
– The funding will support the generation of a comprehensive molecular dataset aimed at accelerating research into Parkinson’s disease.
Building on the Personalized Parkinson’s Project
The new initiative will leverage and significantly expand upon data already gathered through the Personalized Parkinson’s Project (PPP). PPP is an existing two-year longitudinal study of 520 individuals with Parkinson’s disease, conducted as a collaboration between Verily and the Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands. The PPP has already amassed detailed clinical histories, behavioral and physiological data from Verily Study Watches, imaging data, and matched biospecimens like blood and cerebrospinal fluid from participants.
Generating Unprecedented Molecular Insights
Parkinson’s disease affects as many as 1 million people in the U.S., with nearly 90,000 new cases diagnosed each year. The ultimate goal of creating this rich, publicly available molecular data resource is to accelerate the development of effective interventions. Researchers using the data hope to improve the diagnosis of Parkinson’s, enhance the ability to monitor disease progression accurately, and gain a deeper understanding of disease mechanisms that can be targeted therapeutically.
The $14.7M grant from MJFF will fund the application of cutting-edge laboratory methods to analyze the biospecimen samples collected during the PPP study. The goal is to create one of the most detailed molecular datasets ever assembled for Parkinson’s disease research by generating:
- Comprehensive immunogenomic data: To investigate the immune system’s role in Parkinson’s disease pathogenesis.
- Whole genome sequences: For consented participants, enabling the discovery of genetic factors linked to various aspects of the disease.
- Metabolomic and alpha-Synuclein data: To explore promising biomarkers for assessing and predicting disease activity and stages.
This deep molecular profiling, combined with the existing real-world data from PPP, is expected to yield significant insights into the mechanisms and signatures of Parkinson’s, including related genetics, immunology, and metabolism.
Accelerating Research via Open Access
Crucially, the resulting integrated dataset – combining the new molecular data with the existing PPP clinical, wearable, and imaging data – will be made available as a public resource for the global research community. Researchers will be able to access and analyze this unified data through Verily Workbench, Verily’s highly scalable platform designed for secure data organization, collaboration, and analysis. This open-access approach aligns with previous collaborations between Verily and MJFF aimed at assembling and sharing valuable Parkinson’s datasets.
