Fox's comments, while surprising to some, are reallysuggestive of the current state of stem cell research—which, while fascinatingin its possibilities, is still very much an area of research that is still inits infancy. Make no mistake, the MJFF is not turning its back on stem cellresearch, but simply choosing not to put all of its eggs into one Petri dish.
Put in film industry terms, it's not so much a rewind onParkinson's disease research, but perhaps a reboot. Fox notes that he hasn'ttotally abandoned his hope that stem cell research may yield treatments forParkinson's.
"An answer may come from stem cell research, but it's morethan likely to come from another area," he told Sawyer.
For now, the MJFF is focusing its efforts on pairingpatients with clinical trials that are recruiting in their localities, achallenge that seems to be significantly inhibiting clinical progress. Theonline initiative, which the MJFF is calling the Fox Trial Finder(
www.foxtrialfinder.org), matches up patients with research scientistsconducting clinical trials. Currently, about 200 trials are seeking recruitsthrough the website.
It's Fox's hope that this service will improve clinicaltrial recruitment enough to bring the pursuit of Parkinson's biomarkers—"whichis really important," Fox says—to the forefront of Parkinson's researchefforts.
In the meantime, you can catch up to speed on the latestdevelopments in the
Sherley case onpage 21, and in our upcoming July and August issues, we'll take an in-depthlook at two advancing areas of stem cell research: epigenetics and regenerativemedicine.
