Tom Isaacs

The opening ceremony of World Parkinson Congress 2019 was a definite highlight of the event. As expected, it featured a moving tribute to Tom Isaacs, who passed away in 2017. Tom was a co-founder of Cure Parkinson’s Trust (CPT) in the UK, one of the premier global charities funding Parkinson’s research. In addition to leading CPT, Tom’s outsized personality encouraged us all to live well with Parkinson’s Disease, and he was an active participant in past WPC events. Anders Leines’ video, which was in large part, a tribute to Tom Isaacs, was selected as grand prize winner of the WPC ...

Lyndsay Isaacs speech was one of the highlights of the WPC2019 opening session.  A large portion of the WPC2019 opening, not just Lyndsay’s portion, was dedicated to remembering her husband Tom Isaacs, co-founder of UK-based charity Cure Parkinson’s, who passed away since the last WPC. Obviously, any discussion of Tom Isaacs is going to be a mix of sorrow at his passing and smiles recalling memories. But I found her personal story as a caregiver to be extremely insightful, as she touched on her struggles, reaching her breaking point, and finding a way forward. When she was struggling, she found ...

There’s a lot of talk this week about the Parkinson’s Disease trial in the UK involving a surgery that implanted tubes in patients’ heads (behind the ear) that could be used post-surgery to deliver GDNF (Glial Cell Line Derived Neurotrophic Factor) to the brain. The hope was that this would regenerate dying dopamine brain cells in patients with Parkinson's and reverse their condition. Technically, the study failed to meet its goals. But the press release that came out of the study is a bit more enthusiastic, titled  “New Treatment Offers Potentially Promising Results for the Possibility of Slowing, Stopping, or ...