Motivation Monday–So long 2020–Got to find and keep balanced!

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• Journey With Parkinson’s: (Part 2) A Different Side of Life November 2, 2020 “Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream.” Khalil Gibran “Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it you can never get it back.” Harvey Mackay Introduction: I am a scientist, trained as a protein chemist with expertise…
• Journey With Parkinson’s: (Part 2) A Different Side of Life November 2, 2020 “Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream.” Khalil Gibran “Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it you can never get it back.” Harvey Mackay Introduction: I am a scientist, trained as a protein chemist with expertise…
• The road ahead: 2020 January 5, 2020 Here at the SoPD, we are primarily interested in disease modification for Parkinson’s. While there is a great deal of interesting research exploring the causes of the condition, novel symptomatic therapies, and other aspects of Parkinson’s, my focus is generally on the science seeking to slow, stop or reverse the condition. At the start of each year, it is a…
• 2020: Year in Review January 1, 2021 # # # # In this end-of-year post, we review the Parkinson’s research that caught our attention at SoPD HQ in 2020. Month-by-month we will briefly discuss some of the major pieces of research/ announcements that have defined the year and advanced our understanding of Parkinson’s. The list is based on nothing more than the author’s personal opinion – apologies…
• Monthly Research Review – December 2020 December 31, 2020   At the end of each month the SoPD writes a post which provides an overview of some of the major pieces of Parkinson’s-related research that were made available during December 2020. The post is divided into seven parts based on the type of research: Basic biology Disease mechanism Clinical research New clinical trials Clinical trial news Conferences/lectures Other news…
• Monthly Research Review – November 2020 November 30, 2020   At the end of each month the SoPD writes a post which provides an overview of some of the major pieces of Parkinson’s-related research that were made available during November 2020. The post is divided into seven parts based on the type of research: Basic biology Disease mechanism Clinical research New clinical trials Clinical trial news Conferences/lectures Other news…
• Journey with Parkinson’s: (Part 1) Another Side of Life October 27, 2020 “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” J. R. R. Tolkien “We must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind us to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle and mystery.” H. G. Wells Introduction:  Parkinson’s changes us in many ways: it makes us stronger by…
• Journey with Parkinson’s: (Part 1) Another Side of Life October 27, 2020 “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” J. R. R. Tolkien “We must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind us to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle and mystery.” H. G. Wells Introduction:  Parkinson’s changes us in many ways: it makes us stronger by…
• Life with Parkinson’s in the Time of COVID-19: April is Parkinson’s Awareness Month April 1, 2020 “The measure of who we are is what we do with what we have.” Vince Lombardi “When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this: you haven’t.” Thomas Edison Précis: A different world exists today than it did just a few weeks ago, all driven by the COVID-19 pandemic. The virus seemingly favors the elderly who have a pre-existing disease(s); however,…
• Life with Parkinson’s in the Time of COVID-19: April is Parkinson’s Awareness Month April 1, 2020 “The measure of who we are is what we do with what we have.” Vince Lombardi “When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this: you haven’t.” Thomas Edison Précis: A different world exists today than it did just a few weeks ago, all driven by the COVID-19 pandemic. The virus seemingly favors the elderly who have a pre-existing disease(s); however,…
• Monthly Research Review: Jaunary 2020 January 31, 2020   At the end of each month the SoPD writes a post which provides an overview of some of the major pieces of Parkinson’s-related research that were made available during January 2020. The post is divided into seven parts based on the type of research: Basic biology, Disease mechanism, Clinical research, New clinical trials, Clinical trial news, Other news, and…
• Monthly research review: February 2020 February 29, 2020   At the end of each month the SoPD writes a post which provides an overview of some of the major pieces of Parkinson’s-related research that were made available during February 2020. The post is divided into seven parts based on the type of research: Basic biology Disease mechanism Clinical research New clinical trials Clinical trial news Other news Review…
• A plutocratic proposal: iCancer February 2, 2020    Speeding up the clinical development process is a shared goal across many medical conditions (not just Parkinson’s and neurodegeneration), and there are many different approaches to achieving this that are being explored. Some of these approaches could be considered to be bordering on the unethical, but there are aspects of their structure and design that are still worthy of…
• Holding On to Happiness, but Not Too Tightly February 22, 2019 Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The H in the CHRONDI Creed refers to happiness. Happiness can be an elusive thing when battling a chronic disease like Parkinson’s. So many things can get in the way of experiencing happiness: pain, deep fatigue, irritability, the time consumed by the disease, and grief accompanying things stolen by the disease. Trying to hold…
• The drug development pipeline for Parkinson’s December 2, 2020 # # # # For a long time a regular request from SoPD readers has been to provide an overview of the clinical trial landscape for Parkinson’s, particularly in the area of drug development. Such projects are difficult, however, as the landscape is broad and dynamic – lots of different approaches being applied and new entrants continually entering the arena.…
• Curasen: Shifting the focus from just dopamine December 8, 2020 # # # # In September, a small biotech company called CuraSen announced that they had dosed the first participant in a clinical trial of their new experimental drug for Parkinson’s. This news did not garner a lot of attention, but was of great interest to us here at the SoPD because the drug – currently named CST-2032 – is…
• Very Keynesian: Cell painting November 25, 2020 # # # # Our ability to grow cells in culture (in petri dishes and flasks in laboratories) has been critical to our efforts to learn more about the biology of Parkinson’s and to screen for novel potential therapies. Recently, researchers have employed more sophisticated methods of characterising cells in culture, to achieve greater insights. These effort have led to…
• Quotes to Help the Life Journey With Parkinson’s December 29, 2020 “Hard times don’t create heroes. It is during the hard times when the ‘hero’ within us is revealed.” Bob Riley “Remember, to the last, that while there is life there is hope.” Charles Dickens Précis: About once a year, I have a blog post dedicated to quotes, words worth reading. Hopefully, some of the quotes can smooth out your path…
• TGF-beta: The Parkinson’s superfamily? December 12, 2020 # # # # A lot of Parkinson’s research has focused on a neurotrophic factor called glial cell-derived neurotrophic factor (or GDNF). But GDNF only represents a small fraction of a much larger class of neurotrophic factors, called the Transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) superfamily. Recently, researchers have been investigating some of the other TGF-β family members in preclinical models of…
• The Wim Hof method February 6, 2020   A regular theme of the SoPD website is the reviewing of novel phamarcological treatments that are being tested on models of Parkinson’s. And while the breadth of the research is exciting and encouraging, the average reader may feel distant to the results of those studies as the experimental drug being tested is still a long way from possible regulatory…
• We All Could Use Some Healing Hugs April 24, 2020 I miss my support groups, the warm handshakes, and the genuine greeting, “How have you been?” Most of all, I miss hugs from my granddaughters. There is no technology that can replace their healing hugs. We are social beings, and to thrive rather than just survive, we need healing contact with fellow human beings. As governors in the U.S. consider…
• PARP-kinson’s goes chlorogenic December 20, 2020 # # # # For a long time it was been reported that coffee may be able to reduce the risk of developing Parkinson’s, but the mechansim by which this association could be occurring has remained elusive. Now researchers from South Korea have discovered a biological pathway that could help to explain the protective association. It involves a protein called…