Advancements in Deep Brain Stimulation, advances in genetic analysis, and a requirement for refocus on non-motor symptoms
At the end of May our team attended the World Congress on Parkinson’s Disease and Related Disorders (IAPRD) in Lisbon. This annual event brings together researchers, clinicians, and other healthcare professionals with an interest in Parkinson’s Disease and other neurodegenerative disorders, and offers three days of clinically-relevant disease and treatment overviews and updates.
We’ve compiled some key insights gathered from the congress sessions and discussions, and explored how our AccessPD Cohort programme has the potential to support these advancements moving forward.
Key takeaway 1:
Significant advancements in Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) are moving towards adaptive and personalised approaches.
uMed’s AccessPD Patient Cohort provides researchers with access to a database of nearly 1000 Parkinson’s Disease patients that can be rapidly re-contacted and invited to ‘sub-studies’ without the need to set-up recruitment from scratch.
Our technology allows for the quick identification of patients within the cohort that match specific study criteria and that have already consented to be re-contacted for additional study opportunities. This enables rapid engagement and recruitment of pre-screened patients for interventional studies such as those focusing on DBS.
Key takeaway 2:
Genetic analysis is unveiling numerous variants associated with Parkinson’s Disease, enhancing our understanding of its pathogenesis and uncovering new potential treatment targets.
Programmes such as the Global Parkinson’s Genetics Program (GP2) are pivotal in improving genetics knowledge to accelerate the development and deployment of therapeutic strategies for PD.
uMed has recently partnered with GP2 (keep an eye out for more news!) to support expansion of this international initiative through the provision of access to genetic samples collected as part of our AccessPD Cohort Study. GP2 will perform genetic analyses of the samples to feed into the programme, and results will also be linked back to additional endpoints within the AccessPD clinical dataset including ePROs, electronic Clinician Reported Outcomes (eClinROs), EHR and device data.
This partnership will significantly contribute to developments in genetic analysis, as well as provide researchers with access to enriched data collected within AccessPD.
Key takeaway 3:
While much research focuses on motor symptoms, non-motor symptoms significantly impact patients’ quality of life and deserve more attention.
AccessPD enables the remote collection of longitudinal data on symptoms via surveys, allowing for continuous monitoring of patients over time. This method facilitates the identification of patterns and trends in symptom progression, enabling more accurate patient stratification. By distinguishing between different subgroups of patients based on their symptom profiles, targeted interventions can be developed and implemented more effectively.
The PD Movers Projects
We also had the pleasure of speaking with Alissa Pacheco, Clinical Research Manager at the Neurorehabilitation Research Laboratory, Columbia University, about the PD Movers project, an initiative started by a team of Columbia researchers to share the stories of Black and African Americans affected by PD.
Doctors and researchers at Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC) and Teachers College, Columbia University invited a group of Black and African American individuals with Parkinson’s Disease and their caregivers to come together to develop an educational guide for Parkinson’s disease (PD) designed specifically for the Black and African American community.
Find out more at > https://www.neurology.columbia.edu/patient-care/specialties/movement-disorders/pd-movers-we-keep-moving-storybook
We believe AccessPD could learn from their success and implement similar strategies to boost diversity and inclusion within our own initiatives.
If you’d like to learn how AccessPD can support your research project please contact our team at hello@umed.io.
