Arthur Roach 00:00:10
It's really a patient-led initiative to work like a seed venture fund to find projects that are aiming to create new treatments for Parkinson's. It's very much focused on new treatments driven by the priorities of the Parkinson's community and funded by the Parkinson's community. Because all the funding and the motivation and priorities come from the Parkinson's community, we'll fund projects that perhaps other people won't, might fund them in a way other people won't, but ultimately, we think this will lead to more and better treatments for Parkinson's.
John L. Lehr 00:00:39
We're still working with levodopa, which is a therapy that does very well for people with Parkinson's, but it's not a cure, and it has a lot of side effects. It's been the frontline therapy for 50-plus years. Although there have been adjustments to it to make it even better, it's still only really the one therapy that we have for dopamine replacement that we can give to people. I think talking about hope, giving people hope that there are new and better therapies coming, is critical.
Arthur Roach 00:01:11
And we hear a pretty consistent message that people do want disease course-modifying treatment. They want the cure, they want something to stop their Parkinson's in its tracks at the early stages for sure. Maybe that's a dream, but they also have these symptomatic needs, especially as people living with Parkinson's today have gone a little bit beyond the early stage.
The problem of creating new treatments for Parkinson's is a big problem. It's an international problem. It's a problem that will take many years and many millions to solve. The answer to that, we all know, is collaboration, is cooperation. Our collaboration on the Virtual Biotech is a great example of that. Even throughout the Virtual Biotech, beyond that, we have collaboration with other funders, sometimes private funds. Part of what we're doing here is forming those collaborations to allow us, of course, to have more impact and bring forward bigger projects.
John L. Lehr 00:02:02
Parkinson's, as we always say, is just too big of a disease for any one organization or any one entity to do it alone. We have to come together, we have to collaborate, we have to trust in each other and rely on each other, and bring our greatest minds forward for these programs that we think are really going to change the course of this disease.
Arthur Roach 00:02:25
Part of our rationale in approaching the Virtual Biotech and the way we're doing it is that it's difficult to find investment for early-stage Parkinson's projects. But there is interest, there is a market, if you like, there. The pharma companies do want Parkinson's projects. We can see that. There are lots of pharma companies that are investing tens, hundreds of millions in new Parkinson's drugs. They just are a little bit shy of those early projects, the higher-risk projects. There's always something they're in competition with, whether it's Alzheimer's or cancer or something else. The early stages often don't get funding, even though there is interest there.
John L. Lehr 00:03:00
We're fortunate because we have people who are willing to support drug discovery and development philanthropically at a very high level. But when we do have progress and something turns out to be positive, being able to reinvest those funds in second- and third-generation therapies is just really critical. It's what makes it such an exciting endeavor for us. Cystic fibrosis and leukemia and lymphoma, there are lots of other examples in diseases, not Parkinson's, where there's been success in using this model.
Arthur Roach 00:03:36
The projects we have funded over the last five years or six years of the program — in fact, we've gotten up to 13 projects we've committed to — many of these projects are quite large, and we often can't fund the whole project. But the fact that we're in there, we understand Parkinson's, you're in there, you understand Parkinson's, gives other investors some confidence to go forward and co-invest, raising the amount of money available. The clinical trial in Parkinson's dyskinesia showed a clear positive result.
We found a good project, we found the funding, they did the study, and the result was positive. The next stage for that might be a partnership where many more millions of dollars could be available for that project to move it forward for Parkinson's and possibly bring a new dyskinesia treatment to the market.
John L. Lehr 00:04:26
I think we'll get to a point where we're able to raise tens of millions of dollars from donors to support this initiative. And the more we raise, the faster we can go, the more therapies we can get into development.
Arthur Roach 00:04:38
As years go on, in the future we'll see even more and more success, and hopefully there'll be new treatments in the clinic in a number of years that have the Parkinson's Virtual Biotech stamp on them. We supported them, the Parkinson's community, your supporters in the U.S., ours in the UK, made these happen. They should be proud of that. One thing that we tell our supporters, and I truly mean it, is that this is a way to create new treatments in years, not decades. People have heard too many times, it's 10 more years, 10 more years, everything's 10 more years. Well, we have some projects in our pipeline that actually in two or three more years, if they go well, could lead to a drug approved, certainly in the UK, and that will open the door to approval in other countries.
John L. Lehr 00:05:15
Years, not decades. That's going to provide a lot of hope to people living with Parkinson's.
