23andMe and The Parkinson’s Institute Announce Initiative to Advance Parkinson’s Disease Research

23andMe, a privately-held personal genetics company, and The Parkinson's Institute and Clinical Center (“Parkinson’s Institute”) today announced a research initiative under which Parkinson’s Institute patients, with financial support from The Michael J. Fox Foundation, will enroll in the 23andMe Personal Genome Service™ to support the development of advanced methods for clinical and epidemiologic research for Parkinson’s disease.

The new research initiative is designed to improve current methods of collecting information for Parkinson’s research by leveraging the internet to dramatically expand the involvement of Parkinson’s patients in clinical research and increase the frequency and quality of patient data collection. Specifically:

• Together, 23andMe and the Parkinson’s Institute will design and validate web-based clinical assessment tools that can be administered to online communities.
• 23andMe will establish a social networking platform to facilitate the development of communities and research projects based on common traits of Parkinson’s disease patients.
• All participating Parkinson’s Institute patients will be enrolled in the 23andMe Personal Genome Service™ and will provide a saliva sample for a comprehensive genome scan generating more than 580,000 data points per patient.
• Parkinson’s Institute patients will provide specific information and insights that will include their individual environmental exposures, family history, disease progression and treatment response.
• Patients’ risk factor and clinical data collected through the newly developed and validated web-based tools will then be merged with their genetic data to conduct research on Parkinson’s disease.
• New surveys will be developed and administered to the growing cohort of patients, generating new risk factor and clinical data for comparison with the existing genetic data.
• Through the deployment of an innovative approach to clinical research information gathering utilizing web-based tools, the initiative will help to expand the involvement of Parkinson’s disease patients in clinical research and increase the frequency and uniformity of patient data collection.