Parkinson's Disease Fact Sheet

CIRM has a strong focus on Parkinson's Disease research, funding basic projects coaxing stem cells to mature into the neurons affected by Parkinson's disease as well as projects turning those basic discoveries into future therapies.

If you want to learn more about CIRM funding decisions or make a comment directly to our board, join us at a public meeting. You can find agendas for upcoming public meetings on our meetings page.

Learn more about stem cell research:
Stem Cell Basics Primer | Stem Cell Videos | What We Fund

Find clinical trials:
CIRM does not track stem cell clinical trials. If you or a family member is interested in participating in a clinical trial, please see the national trial database to find a trial near you: clinicaltrials.gov

The role of stem cells in Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease occurs when the neurons or nerve cells in the portion of the brain that controls movement stop functioning properly. These neurons send signals using a molecule called dopamine, and are referred to as dopaminergic neurons. About 500,000 people are currently living with Parkinson’s disease in the U.S.. Although there are drugs that can help with symptoms of the disease there is no cure.

Stem cell scientists are taking two general approaches to understanding and treating this disease. The first approach involves understanding the disease and looking for new drugs to treat it. CIRM grantees have taken skin cells from people with Parkinson’s disease, reprogrammed them back to an embryonic-like state, turning them into the kind of stem cell that can be transformed into any other cell in the body, then coaxing those cells to become the type of neuron that is affected by Parkinson’s disease. Those cells showed signs of the disease in the lab dish, and were distinctly different from the same cells created from healthy people.

Being able to study human Parkinson’s disease cells in a lab dish is a major milestone. Now, scientists can expose those cells to different drugs to find the ones that eliminate signs of the disease. If scientists find drugs that treat the disease in a lab dish, they will then test those same drugs in animals and develop the most promising into a therapy for people with the disease. Several teams of CIRM-funded researchers are using stem cell techniques to create Parkinson’s disease cells in the lab dish and then screening them for new drugs.

Other groups are creating dopamine-producing cells in the lab dish with the hope that they could replace the neurons that are damaged in people with the disease.

Progress and Promise in Developing a Cure for Parkinson's Disease

CIRM Grants Targeting Parkinson's Disease

Researcher name	Institution	Grant Title	Funding
Stuart Lipton	Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute	MEF2C-Directed Neurogenesis From Human Embryonic Stem Cells	$3,035,996
Arnold Kriegstein	University of California, San Francisco	Derivation of Inhibitory Nerve Cells from Human Embryonic Stem Cells	$2,507,223
Zhuohua Zhang	Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute	Derivation of Parkinson's Disease Coded-Stem Cells (PD-SCs)	$1,589,760
Zhuohua Zhang	Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute	Modeling Parkinson's Disease Using Human Embryonic Stem Cells	$758,999
Su Guo	University of California, San Francisco	Identifying small molecules that stimulate the differentiation of hESCs into dopamine-producing neurons	$564,309
Susan McConnell	Stanford University	Optimization of guidance response in human embryonic stem cell derived midbrain dopaminergic neurons in development and disease	$633,170
Susan McConnell	Stanford University	Identification and characterization of human ES-derived DA neuronal subtypes	$1,407,076
Dennis Steindler	The Parkinson's Institute	Stem Cell Pathologies in Parkinson’s disease as a key to Regenerative Strategies	$6,718,471
Stuart Lipton	Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute	hESC-derived NPCs Programmed with MEF2C for Cell Transplantation in Parkinson’s Disease	$96,448
Marcel Daadi	Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute	Neural Stem Cell-Based Therapy For Parkinson’s Disease	$99,976
R. Jeremy Nichols	The Parkinson's Institute	Understanding the role of LRRK2 in iPSC cell models of Parkinson's Disease	$1,482,822
Lei Wang	The Salk Institute for Biological Studies	Genetic Encoding Novel Amino Acids in Embryonic Stem Cells for Molecular Understanding of Differentiation to Dopamine Neurons	$2,626,937
Evan Snyder	Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute	Developmental Candidates for Cell-Based Therapies for Parkinson's Disease (PD)	$5,416,003
Xianmin Zeng	Buck Institute for Age Research	Banking transplant ready dopaminergic neurons using a scalable process	$6,016,624
Fred Gage	The Salk Institute for Biological Studies	Crosstalk: Inflammation in Parkinson’s disease (PD) in a humanized in vitro model	$2,472,839
J. William Langston	The Parkinson's Institute	Editing of Parkinson’s disease mutation in patient-derived iPSCs by zinc-finger nucleases	$1,327,983
Michele Calos	Stanford University	Site-specific integration of Lmx1a, FoxA2, & Otx2 to optimize dopaminergic differentiation	$1,619,627
David Schaffer	University of California, Berkeley	Engineering Defined and Scaleable Systems for Dopaminergic Neuron Differentiation of hPSCs	$1,493,928
J. William Langston	The Parkinson's Institute	Using patient-specific iPSC derived dopaminergic neurons to overcome a major bottleneck in Parkinson's disease research and drug discovery	$3,701,766
David Schaffer	University of California, Berkeley	Directed Evolution of Novel AAV Variants for Enhanced Gene Targeting in Pluripotent Human Stem Cells and Investigation of Dopaminergic Neuron Differentiation	$918,000
			Total: $44,487,957.00