Parkinson's disease (PD) is a progressive and incurable neurological disease affecting an estimated 4 million people worldwide. Health care costs in the U.S. alone have been estimated in excess of $6B. While many FDA-approved therapeutic interventions (pharmaceutical, surgical and physiological) have become available for the management of the motor and cognitive complications associated with PD, the majority of interventions become less effective over time as the disease progresses. The challenge is to develop more effective and longer lasting treatments that alter the disease course in addition to managing symptoms. ? ? Identifying incremental therapeutic efficacy over existing treatments may be hindered by existing clinical outcome measures that suffer from relatively low reliability and sensitivity. The next wave of clinical trials, therefore, will likely require reliable and sensitive biological markers that correlate with clinical outcomes. In Phase I of this project, we propose to test the efficacy of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), as a biomarker for quantifying a therapeutic response in PD. Phase II will entail the development of a standardized neuroimaging platform based on proprietary technology to be implemented across wide range of MRI scanner platforms. This commercial platform will target academic medical centers, hospitals, and clinics, as well as the pharmaceutical industry, in order to facilitate the evaluation of therapeutic response in PD. ? ?
