Verily Awarded Research Grant From the Michael J. Fox Foundation to Generate One of the World’s Largest, High-Dimensional Molecular Datasets of Parkinson’s Patients

DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today Verily, an Alphabet health data platform and AI company, announced it has received a grant from The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF) to generate a comprehensive molecular dataset to advance Parkinson’s disease research.

Verily will use cutting-edge molecular profiling techniques to accompany clinical, imaging, and wearable-based behavioral and physiological data already collected over several years as part of the Personalized Parkinson’s Project (PPP), a collaboration with the Radboud University Medical Center. PPP is a two year longitudinal study of 520 people with Parkinson’s which generated detailed clinical histories, data from the Verily Study Watch, imaging data, and matched biospecimens such as blood and cerebrospinal fluid. The data will be made available as a public resource to researchers through Verily’s Workbench solution.

The $14.7M grant will fund the use of multiple laboratory methods on biospecimen samples from the PPP study to create one of the most detailed molecular Parkinson’s disease datasets. The data will consist of deep real-world and molecular profiles, enabling the generation of insights into the mechanisms and signatures of the disease, and research to improve understanding of related genetics, immunology, and metabolism. Molecular techniques will include the generation of:

• A comprehensive, high-resolution immunogenomic data resource to fuel research on the immune system’s association with Parkinson’s disease pathogenesis.
• Whole genome sequences for those that have consented to enable discovery of genetic factors associated with different aspects of Parkinson’s disease.
• Metabolomic and alpha-Synuclein data, which have shown promise for assessing and predicting disease activity and stages.

“Scientific understanding of Parkinson’s disease has advanced significantly over the past decade, and we continue to seek new answers on its genetic, immunological and molecular determinants,” said Mark Frasier, PhD, chief scientist at MJFF. “The Michael J. Fox Foundation supports a broad portfolio exploring biological forms of Parkinson’s disease through molecular phenotyping. As part of those efforts, Verily’s new data resource aims to enable researchers to achieve breakthroughs on the underlying mechanisms of the disease and develop novel therapies that can improve the quality of life for people with Parkinson’s disease and their caregivers.”

The resulting data will join a number of other Parkinson’s datasets available through Verily’s platform, which securely organizes and enriches complex healthcare data, and offers solutions such as Verily Workbench, a highly scalable environment for researchers to safely collaborate and analyze unified datasets to advance research and discovery.

This work builds on years of collaboration between Verily and MJFF to assemble datasets and make them easily accessible to researchers all over the world.

“We are dedicated to using data and technology to accelerate cutting edge research,” said Andrew Trister, MD, PhD, chief medical and scientific officer at Verily. “This grant expands upon our previous research efforts, enabling us to generate one of the most extensive molecular data assets of its kind, which global researchers will access through Verily’s platform to advance new discoveries in Parkinson’s disease.”

It is estimated that as many as 1 million people in the U.S. live with Parkinson’s disease and nearly 90,000 new cases are diagnosed annually. This publicly available molecular data resource will be used to accelerate the development of interventions that can improve the diagnosis of Parkinson’s, improve the ability to monitor disease progression, and enhance understanding of disease mechanisms that can be targeted therapeutically.

About Verily

Verily is an Alphabet data platform and AI company purpose-built for precision health. We combine deep clinical, regulatory, and technological expertise to provide our customers with patient-centric solutions that make healthcare more personal and precise. Verily solutions are designed to make healthcare data AI-ready and fit for purpose across care, research, and public health. For more information about Verily please visit: verily.com.