Mayo Clinic and the Arizona Parkinson's Disease Consortium announce collaboration with the Michael J. Fox Foundation

Monday, November 20, 2006

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. - Mayo Clinic and the Arizona Parkinson's Disease Consortium (APDC) are co-recipients of a $2.8 million, three-year grant from the Michael J. Fox Foundation, intended to support research for diagnosis and treatment of Parkinson's disease. Six research institutions make up the APDC. Mayo Clinic's funding, entitled the Prescott Family Initiative at the Arizona Parkinson's Disease Consortium, will expand APDC's work with the Sun Health Research Institute's Brain and Body Donation Program of Sun City, Ariz.

The Sun Health program conducts in-depth clinical and postmortem studies of normal aging adults, as well as people with Parkinson's disease. The program will investigate predictors of Parkinson's Disease and Parkinson's Disease-Associated dementia, made possible by a donation from Judi and George Prescott and family of Wisconsin.

"The APDC is thrilled to collaborate with The Michael J. Fox Foundation on this unique initiative," said Charles Adler, M.D., Ph.D., professor of neurology and chair, Mayo Clinic Division of Movement Disorders. He and Thomas Beach, M.D., Ph.D., Sun Health Research Institute, are the project's co-principal investigators. "By maximizing the considerable resources of MJFF and the Consortium, and strategically optimizing the Brain and Body Donation Program's performance, we are confident that this program will yield key insights for the diagnosis and treatment of PD."

The Brain and Body Donation Program was established 20 years ago by Sun Health Research Institute. Nearly 800 people are currently enrolled, including some 100 with Parkinson's disease and 500 healthy individuals. Participants are evaluated annually by a movement disorders specialist and a behavioral neurologist. All subjects agree to donate their brain and/or body organs following death. Information compiled on three distinct subsets — healthy adults, PD patients and healthy adults who, over the course of their enrollment, develop PD onset — can offer a vivid picture of changes in the brain and body before, during and after Parkinson's onset.

The Prescott Family Initiative will support the activities of the APDC through three core areas of research: a clinical core, a neuropathology core and a bioinformatics core. The program will comprise both long-term studies and specific clinical and postmortem research to identify motor, non-motor and other manifestations of Parkinson's as possible early markers of disease onset. Further studies will be done to identify both cognitive and non-cognitive markers for the development of dementia in people with PD. All members of the APDC (including Barrow Neurological Institute, Arizona State University, Banner Health Good Samaritan Medical Centers and Translational Genomics) jointly participate in the recruitment, clinical assessment and research projects with subjects enrolled in the program.

About The Michael J. Fox Foundation

Founded in 2000, The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research is dedicated to ensuring the development of a cure for Parkinson's disease within this decade through an aggressively funded research agenda. The Foundation has funded more than $80 million in research to date, either directly or through partnerships.

About the Arizona Parkinson's Disease Consortium

Beginning as a collaboration between Mayo Clinic and Sun Health Research Institute, the APDC has expanded the number of institutions and investigators to become a premier PD research network. The Arizona Parkinson's Disease Consortium has received funding from a number of sources, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Arizona Biomedical Research Commission. Under Dr. Adler's direction, intensive efforts are under way to find the cause of PD and dementia in PD, as well as new treatment modalities that may increase survival and quality of life for people with Parkinson's disease.

About Mayo Clinic

Mayo Clinic is the first and largest integrated, not-for-profit group practice in the world. As a leading academic medical center in the Southwest, Mayo Clinic focuses on providing specialty and surgical care in more than 65 disciplines at its outpatient facility in north Scottsdale and at Mayo Clinic Hospital. The 208-licensed bed hospital is located at 56th Street and Mayo Boulevard (north of Bell Road) in northeast Phoenix, and provides inpatient care to support the medical and surgical specialties of the clinic, which is located at 134th Street and Shea Boulevard in Scottsdale.

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