New Parkinson’s trial platform could “dramatically speed up the search for a cure”

Scientists have proposed the use of a multi-arm, multi-stage trial platform (MAMS) to assess different potential treatments for Parkinson’s and help progress the search for a cure.

This would depart from conventional clinical procedures, allowing several potential treatments to be assessed simultaneously. In a continuous process, each treatment ‘arm’ is evaluated and unsuccessful ‘arms’ of the trial are dropped, enabling a far more cost and time efficient system.

Currently, MAMS are used to evaluate treatments for certain types of cancer – and work is underway to develop MAMS for other neurodegenerative conditions.

Camille Buchholz Carroll, associate professor at the University of Plymouth, UK, and study author, said that MAMS trials could “dramatically speed up the search for a cure”.

She said: “We have the opportunity to learn from the experience in these other conditions and design a new trial that will work for people with Parkinson’s.”

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