The Michael J. Fox Foundation

The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research is dedicated to finding a cure for Parkinson’s disease through an aggressively funded research agenda and to ensuring the development of improved therapies for those living with Parkinson’s today.

The Michael J. Fox Foundation (MJFF) exists for one reason: to accelerate the next generation of Parkinson’s disease (PD) treatments. In practice, that means identifying and funding projects most vital to patients; spearheading solutions around seemingly intractable field-wide challenges; coordinating and streamlining the efforts of multiple, often disparate, teams; and doing whatever it takes to drive faster knowledge turns for the benefit of every life touched by PD.

In principle, it means leveraging our core values of optimism, tenacity, collaboration, boldness, adaptability and curiosity in problem-solving to work on behalf of the 6 million people worldwide living with Parkinson’s.

We aspire to go out of business
We deliberately hold no endowment or excessive financial reserves. We act with urgency, typically deploying funds raised within a few months for the fastest possible impact.

We work to steward donations wisely and keep a tight rein on expenses. We are proud of our track record of efficiency, with 88 cents of every dollar spent since inception going straight to our programs.

We operate with focus and determination in everything we do. We won’t stop until a cure is found. We’re on it. We take pride in the accomplishments we’ve made so far. But ultimately we have only one definition of success: scientific solutions that produce tangible improvements in patients’ lives.

We put patients first
Our team works tirelessly every day with one urgent goal in mind: speeding breakthroughs that patients can feel in their everyday lives. We strive to make progress in Parkinson’s disease in the following key areas by evaluating risk, opportunities and challenges through a patient-focused lens, including:

* Treatments that can slow, stop or reverse disease
* Better treatments for currently unaddressed or under-addressed symptoms
* Treatments to address or avoid the debilitating side effects of current PD drugs

Our Foundation is a trusted strategic leader and partner to researchers, patients, thought leaders and philanthropists. With an unbiased expert perspective and a global network of contacts, our wide-ranging view of the field lets us collaborate to solve complex problems that require different talents and target resources where they are needed most — to pay off for patients faster.

It is accepted practice among private disease research funders that the most important decisions — how to allocate donor-raised dollars — are made by external scientific advisors and boards. We bucked this model from day one in favor of building an in-house team of formally trained PhDs and business-trained project managers.

We’re on a mission to meet every person with Parkinson’s online or face to face. We’re committed to connecting patients and families to the robust nationwide PD community. By participating in clinical trials, advocating for Parkinson’s policy or engaging in our community and Team Fox events, they are helping us carry new therapies over the goal line.

Our Impact
A renaissance is taking place in Parkinson’s research and therapeutic development. The Michael J. Fox Foundation (MJFF) is leading the charge toward a world without Parkinson’s disease (PD).

Since our Foundation’s inception, we have operated with one single-minded goal: putting ourselves out of business by finding the cure for Parkinson’s. Driven by this admittedly unusual approach, we have designed a milestone-driven, innovative and high-risk model to identify and accelerate those ideas with the greatest potential to solve field-wide problems, accelerate the pace of research and make a tangible impact on patients’ unmet needs. Everything we do is in service of our mission to eradicate Parkinson’s altogether.

While we will never be satisfied until the cure is found, we take pride in our clear, wide-ranging track record of impact on the Parkinson’s research field:

In our preclinical portfolio, MJFF-funded investigations have resulted in more than 20 early-stage therapeutic programs, which have attracted follow-on funding from venture capital, pharmaceutical or government funders for continuing development.

In our clinical portfolio, we have funded or sponsored scores of clinical trials in partnership with both academic and industry teams. Today, more than 15 disease-modifying interventions are in clinical trials. Multiple improved symptomatic therapies have achieved regulatory approval or are poised to do so.

The landmark MJFF-sponsored Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI) has built the most robust dataset and biosample library in the history of Parkinson’s research. Data from brain scans (e.g., MRI, DaTscan), biosample analysis (e.g., spinal fluid protein levels) and intensive “omics” investigations (e.g., whole genome and RNA sequencing) from 1,500 volunteers has been downloaded by researchers over 1.7 million times since the study’s launch in 2010. PPMI played a pivotal role in the discovery of a breakthrough biomarker test that reveals a key pathology of the disease: abnormal alpha-synuclein. Called the alpha-synuclein seeding amplification assay, the test can detect Parkinson’s pathology in spinal fluid in people who show clinical symptoms of the disease and also in people who have not yet shown symptoms but are at a high risk of developing PD.

The Foundation’s online clinical study, Fox Insight, has galvanized people with Parkinson’s and their families to take an active role in research by sharing their lived experience of the disease. Since the study launched in 2017, more than 48,000 individuals have raised their hand to become citizen scientists to power PD research.

CONTACT THE MICHAEL J. FOX FOUNDATION:

If you would like to contact The Michael J. Fox Foundation, call us at 1-212-509-0995 or contact us by regular mail at the following address:

The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research
Grand Central Station
P.O. Box 4777
New York, NY 10163-4777
Phone: 212-509-0995
Email: info@michaeljfox.org