A series of smart trials to fast-track treatments to slow or stop Parkinson’s disease is gathering pace across the country.
Researchers are currently recruiting patients for the next phase of the trials as part of a national drive to urgently tackle the condition
Dr Derrick Beech, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s a few years ago, doesn’t experience tremors.
It’s his walking ability that has worsened over time.
“It’s so varied from one person to another, my issues are more about mobility, speaking and writing,” he said.
He takes three pills a day to relieve the symptoms.
“The simple treatment is you replace the dopamine that you’ve lost,” he said.
The treatment helps patients with Parkinson’s cope, but it doesn’t directly treat or stop the course of the disease.
“Certainly that’s improved quality of life but nothing that’s slowing the disease or stopping it in its tracks,” Macquarie University’s Professor of Cognitive Neurology Simon Lewis said.
Derrick volunteered to test existing medications, in the hope they could help change the course of disease.
It’s part of a multi-million dollar project called the Australian Parkinson’s Mission.
For researchers, it is about “being able to tap into drugs we know are safe, available that we could use and maybe even translate into the clinic quickly,” Lewis said.
The smart trials involve testing a variety of medicines used for other conditions, such as albuterol tablets for asthma and alogliptin to treat type 2 diabetes.
The next phase will test a simple cough medicine ambroxol, and an antibiotic doxycycline.
The medicines target different pathways such as inflammation and a gene called alpha-synuclein implicated in disease.
“So this is the world’s first platform trial, what that means we get to try different drugs in the same trial, the same protocol” Lewis said.
“We have blood biomarkers that can tell us, did that drug actually engage the target, did it reduce inflammation, did it modulate those other pathways we think are important.”
Results from the first stage are likely to be released later this year.
A key feature of these trials is teasing out which patient would benefit most from each treatment
