The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research (MJFF) and the Tau Consortium have announced a funding partnership to accelerate the development of novel PET imaging tracers to detect alpha-synuclein and tau proteins in the living brain.
Several neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson's, involve the aggregation of alpha-synuclein and/or tau. Tools to detect the location and abundance of these proteins would improve clinical care and speed drug development by allowing earlier and more definitive diagnosis, more precise trial subject selection, and more efficient and conclusive therapeutic impact assessment, according to the foundation.
Under the partnership, the Tau Consortium and MJFF will convene and co-fund a team of scientists who will develop compounds that may bind to alpha-synuclein or tau. Dr. Gil Rabinovici of the University of California, San Francisco will direct the initiative.
