But then animal studies showed that the drugs might have lung side effects-issues that might have stopped the drugs dead in their tracks.
![alex p. keaton yuppie scum alex p. keaton yuppie scum](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-a-xJXEAwzec/VAEGQkP8D2I/AAAAAAAABoI/ojiC4LsH4rM/s1600/40r3_53B.jpg)
Roche, Merck and Pfizer all started developing drugs that tarketed the LRRK2 protein. Work done with Google billionaire Sergey Brin and genetics startup 23andMe helped establish the importance of mutations in a gene called LRRK2 (for the protein it makes, leucine-rich repeat kinase 2) as the greatest genetic predictor of Parkinson’s disease risk. The most exciting work, though, is in Parkinson’s genetics.
Alex p. keaton yuppie scum trial#
The company’s clinical trial search engine, Fox Trial Finder, has sped up the development of many Parkinson’s drugs, including Acadia Pharmaceuticals’ Nuplazid, the first drug to treat Parkinson’s psychosis, and an experimental drug to treat Parkinson’s movement disorders from Adamas Pharmaceuticals that will be filed with the FDA this year. A pilot recruitment strategy using Facebook ads lowered the cost of recruiting a patient to less than $24, compared to more than $200 using traditional routes like events, ads and newspapers. “Science is really hard, and a lot of times you don’t get it right.”Īnother big area: using the Fox brand name to get patients to sign up for clinical trials. “I learned what I sensed as an eighth grader in junior high in Canada,” Fox says. What does it have to show for it? A lot of slow progress on basic science-predictions that the celebrity would make short work of a neurodegenerative disease were overly optimistic. Since 2000, the Fox Foundation has spent $600 million on research. It’s always a moment of triumph and ebullience, but also a reminder of the reality of the disease: Fox, 55, is forced to blend his guitar moves with a trembling Parkinsonian gait. At the end of the set, Michael himself comes on-stage to jam on guitar. Last year: John Fogarty the year before that, Paul Simon. Keaton fan club.”)Įach year, the Foundation holds a star-studded gala (think Ryan Reynolds, and a bearded David Letterman) at the Waldorf-Astoria, which culminates in a set by a classic rocker. (He’s referred to the collection of big Wall Street donors who give to his foundation and, in many cases, sit on its board, as “the Alex P. Keaton from the 80s hit show Family Ties, allows Fox to reach out to groups that don’t have a direct connection to the disease he is battling. Being known as Marty McFly, or the charming proto-yuppie Alex P. What Fox has become a master at, though, is leveraging his decades of fame, particularly his iconic turns as the "it" star of the early eighties, into a disease foundation that raised and spent $87 million last year and has turned Parkinson’s research from a pharma backwater to a hot area.