Shared from healthcentral.com
It’s been more than half a century since the last major innovation in Parkinson’s disease (PD) treatment. But now, a new medication is showing the potential to be another breakthrough. After successful phase 3 clinical trials on people newly-diagnosed with Parkinson’s as well as on late-stage patients, the drug tavapadon was recently submitted to the Food and Drug Administration for approval by manufacturer AbbVie.
Crucially, tavapadon could offer symptom control where first-line Parkinson’s treatment levodopa leaves off as the brain’s dopamine nerve cells progressively degrade and die. “Levodopa makes the surviving neurons in Parkinson’s disease make more dopamine than normal,” explains Richard B. Mailman, Ph.D., a professor of pharmacology and neuroscience at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA, and the pioneering scientist behind the new drug. “Tavapadon doesn’t produce more dopamine but rather substitutes for the low dopamine in Parkinson’s to provide symptomatic relief.”