Biomarkers Working Group

Purpose: The primary goal of the Biomarkers Working Group is to develop and advance biomarker research projects in Parkinson’s disease (PD). Our current focus is to identify candidate biomarkers that track PD progression and are suitable as surrogate markers in clinical trials of putative-disease modifying agents – lack of appropriate markers is currently a major barrier.

In 2008, they hosted the First Annual Clifford W. Shults Symposium on biomarkers.  They also are active in making recommendations to the PSG Scientific Review Committee on proposals requesting to use PSG biospecimens.

Current Projects:

• The Working Group is helping to coordinate the biomarker collection component of the QE3 
  study (separately funded through the MJFF).

• Ongoing collaboration with Jing Zhang, MD has led to a proteomics study on DATATOP CSF.