Michael J. Fox Foundation's Rapid Response Innovation Awards Hit Mid-2009 With More Than $1 Million Funded in High-risk/High-reward Approaches to Parkinson's Disease

--Wassilios Meissner, MD, PhD, of University Hospital Bordeaux (France) and Peter Tass, MD, PhD, of the University of Cologne (Germany) want to update deep brain stimulation surgery, taking advantage of new discoveries about the mechanisms of PD to expand DBS’s benefit to a wider range of PD patients. With MJFF funding, they are working in a pre-clinical model of PD to assess the practical potential of modifying abnormal synchronization in the brain’s basal ganglia region — an approach that, according to preliminary theoretical studies, could result in functional improvements for PD patients.