Research on Parkinson’s: more than 30 Million US$ in Funding for International Consortium

An international network on Parkinson’s research that involves scientists from DZNE Tübingen is getting more than 30 million US$ in funding. The grant is provided by the Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s (ASAP) initiative and managed through The Michael J. Fox Foundation.

“The grant runs for five years and was awarded to generate genetic data on more than 150 thousand Parkinson’s patients worldwide,“ Prof. Peter Heutink from DZNE Tübingen explains. “Additional, we will do genome sequencing on a large number of families with individuals affected by the hereditary form of Parkinson’s. Ultimately, the goal is to identify risk factors and thus pave the way for new treatments and prevention strategies.”

The grant goes to the International Parkinson’s Disease Genomics Consortium (IPDGC), in which experts from the US, UK, The Netherlands, France and Germany collaborate. Heutink and his Tübingen colleague, Thomas Gasser, are both members of the IPDGC and are appointed to the steering committee of the new grant. “DZNE Tübingen will be heavily involved in data generation and data analysis. We will be applying cutting edge technologies,” Heutink says. “On a local scale, we will join forces with the Hertie-Institute for Clinical Brain Research. This will happen within the framework of the ‘Defeat Parkinson’s Research Platform’.”

December 2019