Michael J. Fox Foundation Awards Over $2 Million for Validation of 10 Parkinson's Therapeutic Targets

NEW YORK, July 14, 2009 — The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research today announced approximately $2.1 million in total funding to 10 research teams working to validate therapeutic targets for Parkinson's disease.

Target validation is an essential and historically underresourced phase of drug development in which researchers work to determine whether a molecule or mechanism of interest is a true drug target. While researchers have continued to identify novel targets in recent years through genetic, biochemical and epidemiological studies, a lack of funding for validation studies has long been a major roadblock to the efficient translation of these discoveries into practical therapies that benefit people living with PD.