ReallyAlphabet’s Health Data and AI subsidiary will be awarded a $14.7 million research grant from the Michael J. Fox Foundation (MJFF) for Parkinson’s research, generating a detailed molecular data set of disease.
With this initiative, advanced molecular profiling integrates a broad body of clinical, imaging and wearable data collected through the Personalized Parkinson’s Disease Project (PPP).
The PPP is a two-year longitudinal study conducted in collaboration with the Radboud University Medical Center, involving 520 individuals diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
In this study, we captured multimodal datasets including biosphere, clinical history, imaging scans, and physiological data.
Dr. Andrew Trister, Verily’s Chief Medical and Scientific Officer, MobiHealthNews Throughout the study process, participants continued wearing Verily learning monitoring and completed the virtual exercise test.
“This, combined with imaging and clinical data, helped validate the use of digital measurements in Parkinson’s research,” he said.
It also provides a detailed profile of participants’ health and disease progression over time. It can be used to use disease inwardly and to improve clinical trial endpoints for therapeutic development.
“We will use multiple experimental methods to create the most detailed molecular dataset of our PD cohort to date,” Trister said.
These include Verily’s proprietary immune profiler XSEQ with 30x whole genome sequencing (for consenting participants), and cytokines, metabolomics and αLpha-synuclein profiling.
This funding will be used to perform high-resolution molecular analysis at existing biosphere banks, including blood and cerebrospinal fluid samples.
“The approach to molecular analysis is informed by experience supporting researchers working on projects such as AMP-PD, which provides a single unified environment for analyzing complex multiomics data from eight cohorts, including data from MJFF PPMI studies,” Trister said.
The resulting dataset features whole genome sequencing, metabolomics, alpha-synuclein biomarkers, and immunogenicity data. The dataset is expected to support new insights into disease mechanisms, improve diagnosis and accelerate the development of targeted therapies.
These layers aim to improve understanding of the genetic, metabolic and immune pathways involved in Parkinson’s disease and progression.
This data will be made publicly available to the research community through Verily Workbench, a cloud-based environment for managing and analyzing large biomedical datasets.
The platform allows researchers to cross-reference and analyze Parkinson’s related molecular data along with other considered data sets.
Verily noted that Trister has worked with MJFF in several collaborations, including partnerships with MJFF’s Parkinson Progression Marker Initiative (PPMI).
Verily’s Workbench supports MJFF with several programs, including the Parkinson’s Disease (ASAP) initiative and the collaboration science across its resource programs, as well as CRN Cloud, a global Parkinson’s genetic program (GP2) and data sharing tool.
“This grant adds a new dimension to past collaborations by providing new molecular data resources that will help researchers around the world to better understand the genetic, immunological and molecular properties of PD in the PPP data set,” Trister said.
