Michael J. Fox Foundation Announces $11 Million in 2009 Funding for Translational, Pre-Clinical and Clinical Parkinson's Diseas...( NEW YORK Nov. 3 -- The Michael J...),Health

NEW YORK, Nov. 3 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Michael J. Fox Foundation today announced the availability of up to $11 million in 2009 funding for research toward transformative treatments and a cure for Parkinson's disease.

Funding is open to academic and industry researchers through the Foundation's Pipeline Programs, five separate initiatives that stoke research at every stage of the PD drug development pipeline. This includes early-stage discovery research, translational studies that can carry identified hits forward to the next stage of development, and proof-of-principle/first-in-human clinical trials.

"The Michael J. Fox Foundation is committed to prioritizing and aggressively driving research with potential to significantly improve patients' quality of life," said Katie Hood, the Foundation's CEO. "Each one of our Pipeline Programs is a unique and complementary expression of our overarching mission -- identifying and enabling the critical ideas, teams and projects that will carry the field over the finish line to make Parkinson's a disease of the past."

There are a total of five Pipeline Programs: three annually recurring initiatives known collectively as The Edmond J. Safra Core Programs for PD Research; Novel Approaches to Drug Discovery for PD, a collaboration made possible by co-funding from Elan (NYSE: ELN); and the industry-exclusive Therapeutics Development Initiative.

Brief program descriptions follow. Full details are available at http://www.michaeljfox.org/research.cfm. The Foundation has redesigned its Funding Opportunities page to enhance ease of use and provide researchers with a better understanding of how various programs
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