Med-Life Discoveries awarded grant by The Michael J. Fox Foundation
MLD is pleased to announce that it has been awarded a “Spring 2020 Use of Parkinson’s Disease Biosamples” grant from The Michael J Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF). This grant provides access to the full set of baseline samples from the Parkinson’s Progression Marker’s Initiative (PPMI). MLD will be performing comprehensive plasmalogen lipid analyses on the serum of over 1300 samples from the biorepository as part of its Parkinson’s disease research program.
“MLD is leading the industry in the development of plasmalogen-based therapeutics for neurodegenerative diseases including Parkinson’s disease, “ says Dr. Shawn Ritchie, CEO & CSO of MLD, “This grant from MJFF provides a rare and exciting opportunity to further investigate the relationship between plasmalogen deficiency and Parkinson’s disease among a highly characterized patient population. The project represents the most in-depth analysis of plasmalogens in Parkinson’s patients to date and will provide the research community new insights into the role of these critical lipids in the disease process.”
Plasmalogens are unique membrane phospholipids that contain a vinyl-ether bond and impact the ability of neurotransmitters to function properly. Therapeutically replacing plasmalogen levels in deficient subjects could represent an exciting new approach for treating Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Dr. Tara Smith, VP of Therapeutics at MLD says that “Better understanding the deficiency among the patient population will be critical for the ongoing clinical development of our lead plasmalogen compound for Parkinson’s. This project goes beyond understanding just a correlation between the disease and plasmalogens and will allow for the characterization of how plasmalogen levels are impacted in subsets of patients with specific clinical, imaging, biochemical and genetic markers of Parkinson’s. These are details that will be critical in the future to design clinical trials evaluating the efficacy of plasmalogen replacement in Parkinson’s disease.”
Results of the study will be made publicly available through peer-review publications and submission of the data to the PPMI biorepository.
About Med-Life Discoveries
MLD is a biopharmaceutical company in Saskatoon, SK. Canada and leader in the development of novel synthetic plasmalogens and plasmalogen precursors as treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis, and Rhizomelic Chondrodysplasia Punctata (RCDP). MLD also provides lipidomic analysis and custom tandem mass spectrometry assay development, and manufactures its own tandem MS kits for disease screening.