This project is to establish a US - India Collaborative Partnership in Parkinson Disease (CPPD). The CPPD will rely upon the combined efforts of two established consortia of scientific investigators, the Parkinson Study Group (PSG) in the US, and the Parkinson Research Alliance of India (PRAI), each of which is committed to cooperative planning, implementation, analysis and reporting of controlled clinical trials in Parkinson Disease (PD). The PSG, in existence for over two decades, has an established infrastructure to effectively design, implement, recruit subjects, and publish results for clinical research in PD. The establishment of PRAI created a network of experienced clinicians and researchers in major geographic locales throughout India to effectively and efficiently conduct PD research, with the added benefit of being able to quickly recruit subjects for PD trials. Bringing these two capabilities together will further enhance the ultimate goals of both countries to find effective treatment for Parkinson Disease. The CPPD will establish policies and procedures to comply with regulatory requirements in both countries;create systems and processes to distribute study drug and transfer human samples between US and India;and will train investigators in both countries on pertinent rating scales, Good Clinical Practices, and use of regulatory-compliant data management systems, so that future clinical trials in PD can be conducted seamlessly across the US and India.
The relevance of this project to public health is that through the US- India Collaborative Partnership there will be an established infrastructure to enable rapid implementation of clinical trials in Parkinson Disease in both the US and India, facilitating more rapid discovery of treatment in a disease affecting millions of people in both countries.
