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Finding reliable biomarkers has enormous implications.
They can potentially help researchers diagnose disease more accurately.
They can help identify people at different stages.
They can help measure progression.
And they can make clinical trials more precise.
The Michael J. Fox Foundation has helped make PPMI data and biological samples available to qualified researchers.
That approach reflects one of the Foundation’s central ideas.
Scientific information becomes more valuable when researchers can use it collaboratively.
And in 2023, Parkinson’s research reached an important milestone.
A Major Biomarker Advance
In 2023, research supported through PPMI contributed to validation of a biomarker related to alpha-synuclein.
Alpha-synuclein is a protein strongly associated with Parkinson’s disease.
A laboratory technique known as an alpha-synuclein seed amplification assay can detect abnormal alpha-synuclein associated with Parkinson’s biology.
The development did not mean that Parkinson’s had been cured.
It also did not immediately replace every existing diagnostic method.
But it represented a significant research advance because scientists gained a tool capable of objectively detecting a biological feature closely connected to the disease.
For a field that had long relied heavily on clinical symptoms for diagnosis, that was important progress.
And it illustrated why Fox’s decision decades earlier to turn his diagnosis into a research mission mattered.
But research was only one part of his story.
He had never entirely left acting behind.
Stepping Away Without Completely Leaving
After another season of Spin City, Fox stepped back from full-time acting to devote more attention to his family and Parkinson’s advocacy.
It would have been understandable if that had marked the end of his screen career.