Parkinson's Disease Drug Therapies in the Clinical Trial Pipeline: 2020

Abstract

Background: The majority of current pharmacological treatments for Parkinson's disease (PD) were approved for clinical use in the second half of the last century and they only provide symptomatic relief. Derivatives of these therapies continue to be explored in clinical trials, together with potentially disease modifying therapies that can slow, stop or reverse the condition.

Objective: To provide an overview of the pharmacological therapies- both symptomatic and disease modifying- currently being clinically evaluated for PD, with the goal of creating greater awareness and opportunities for collaboration amongst commercial and academic researchers as well as between the research and patient communities.

Methods: We conducted a review of clinical trials of drug therapies for PD using trial data obtained from the ClinicalTrials.gov database and performed a breakdown analysis of studies that were active as of January 21, 2020.

Results: We identified 145 registered and ongoing clinical trials for therapeutics targeting PD, of which 51 were Phase 1 (35% of the total number of trials), 66 were Phase 2 (46% ), and 28 were Phase 3 (19% ). There were 57 trials (39% ) focused on long-term disease modifying therapies, with the remaining 88 trials (61% ) focused on therapies for symptomatic relief. A total of 50 (34% ) trials were testing repurposed therapies.

Conclusion: There is a broad pipeline of both symptomatic and disease modifying therapies currently being tested in clinical trials for PD.

Keywords: Clinical trials; Parkinson’s; disease modification; gene therapy; immunotherapy; inflammation; neuroprotection; studies.

Fig.1

Data collection and trial categorization methodology.

Fig.2

Number of trials of disease-modifying and symptomatic therapies by phase

Fig.3

Agents in active PD drug trials, as of January 21, 2020 on ClinicalTrials.gov (by phase, DMT/ST and therapy category).

Fig.4

Therapy Categories for Trials in Phase 1 (as of January 21, 2020, ClinicalTrials.gov).

Fig.5

Therapy Categories for Trials in Phase 2 (as of January 21, 2020, ClinicalTrials.gov).

Fig.6

Therapy Categories for Trials in Phase 3 (as of January 21, 2020, ClinicalTrials.gov).

Fig.7

Target enrollment by Phase for Active Phase 1– 3 PD Drug Trials (as of January 21, 2020, ClinicalTrials.gov).

Fig.8

Geographical location of active PD drug trials sites (as of January 21, 2020, ClinicalTrials.gov). Map source: ClinicalTrials.gov (enlarged font size).

Fig.9

Distribution of number of sites per trial across Phases 1– 3.