PPMI

The Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI) is a landmark observational study sponsored by The Michael J. Fox Foundation and supported by more than 40 industry, nonprofit, and private partners to support worldwide strategies for investigating and defining biomarker signatures of Parkinson’s disease (PD) risk, onset, and progression.

ASAP supports PPMI and is enabling its seismic expansion to increase recruitment efforts and remote testing for those at risk for PD with the goal of developing novel tools for precision medicine approaches and earlier intervention strategies. This infrastructure provides a ready platform for future discoveries.

About PPMI

Since 2010, PPMI has been collecting valuable resources for research, pairing biosamples (DNA, RNA, plasma, serum, whole blood, urine, saliva, and peripheral blood mononuclear cells) with clinical and imaging data to understand the underlying changes in the body as Parkinson’s starts and progresses. More than 1,400 volunteers – people with early-stage PD, individuals with risk factors, and healthy control volunteers – enrolled across 33 sites in 11 countries, contributing data and samples over at least five years.

Led by principal investigator Ken Marek, MD, of the Institute of Neurodegenerative Disorders and a consortium of international committee members, PPMI makes its data set and biorepository – the most robust in PD to date – available to academia and industry to accelerate breakthroughs. Researchers around the world have downloaded PPMI data more than eight million times, and the study has fielded more than 200 biosample requests. PPMI data is also a cornerstone of data harmonization initiatives such as AMP-PD, which counts ASAP and MJFF as partners.

For researchers: access data from PPMI.

For potential participants: learn more about how to get involved through The Michael J. Fox Foundation.

PPMI Target Cohorts

PPMI aims to reach its target enrollment by the end of 2023.

ASAP & PPMI

ASAP is supporting the expansion of PPMI, growing its clinical cohort to more than 4,000 participants at 50+ sites, with half of the study population carrying clinical or genetic risk factors without manifesting PD. Additionally, PPMI recently launched an online platform open to anyone over the age of 18 in the U.S. (with plans to expand). This tool collects data on health and disease and screens individuals for PD risk factors that may nominate them for further testing and site enrollment.

ASAP’s support also enables PPMI to continue to follow its original cohort, some more than a decade from disease onset and others now with PD who contributed data pre-diagnosis. This expansion will facilitate an unprecedented look at the progression of Parkinson’s from the molecular scale to the clinical scale, from pre-motor to later-stage disease.

“PPMI lays the groundwork for progress toward new treatments and cures. With ASAP support, we are able to exponentially grow the impact of our study and move closer to stopping disease before it starts.”

–Sohini Chowdhury, MJFF Deputy CEO and Head of Research