Parkinson’s disease has always been a complex puzzle, for patients and researchers alike, with contributing factors ranging from overt motor symptoms to hidden molecular interactions.
The Michael J. Fox Foundation has been working with Verily for years to develop a public data resource exploring the condition’s relationships with a person’s underlying genetics, immune system and metabolism. Now, the foundation is re-upping its support with a new $14.7 million grant to Google’s life-science-focused sibling company.
At the center of the effort is the Personalized Parkinson’s Project—first launched in 2016 in collaboration with Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands—which has followed more than 500 participants for years, collecting samples over time with the goal of developing new biomarkers to help track the progression of the disease as well as uncover new targets for potential therapies.
Verily has previously been working to build data analysis tools that can make use of those clinical data and biospecimens, including blood and cerebrospinal fluid draws, and make the findings accessible to other developers of tests and treatments.
Now, the latest funding from the foundation will support the use of multiple laboratory methods to produce newly detailed molecular profiles of those collected samples—and merge them with longitudinal imaging scans as well as behavioral and physiological data recorded from wearable devices, such as the movement sensors within the Verily Study Watch.
“This grant expands upon our previous research efforts, enabling us to generate one of the most extensive molecular data assets of its kind, which global researchers will access through Verily’s platform to advance new discoveries in Parkinson’s disease,” Verily’s chief medical and scientific officer, Andrew Trister, M.D., Ph.D., said in a statement.
According to the two, the results should provide deep, real-world profiles of people with Parkinson’s and offer insight into the hallmarks of the disease using the latest technologies through Verily’s Workbench platform.
“The Michael J. Fox Foundation supports a broad portfolio exploring biological forms of Parkinson’s disease through molecular phenotyping,” said the MJFF’s chief scientist, Mark Frasier, Ph.D. “As part of those efforts, Verily’s new data resource aims to enable researchers to achieve breakthroughs on the underlying mechanisms of the disease and develop novel therapies that can improve the quality of life for people with Parkinson’s disease and their caregivers.”
In the lab, that will include assembling high-resolution data into the immune system’s association with Parkinson’s progression, as well as performing whole genome sequencing. Researchers will also catalog metabolomic data and levels of alpha-synuclein, the protein that plays a major role in the formation of Lewy bodies.