Parkure, a spin-out of Edinburgh University, is launching a crowdfunding campaign to fund its research for a cure against Parkinson’s disease. The company is aiming to secure £100,000 ($165,800).
Parkure’s focus is on early-stage discovery of the disease and development of a cure. The company’s approach is based on research at Edinburgh, where researchers developed a way to genetically engineer Parkinson’s into fruit flies so that the effects of drug candidates can be tested on a living being.
The market for Parkinson’s drugs is currently worth some $3bn but all available medication merely treats symptoms. In the UK alone, one in 100 people over the age of 60 is affected by the neurodegenerative disease, at an annual cost of £2bn ($3.32bn) to the country’s National Health Service.
If successful, the company plans on using the money to investigate repurposing drugs that are already available for other diseases.
The spin-out has attracted the support of Parkinson’s UK and the Michael J. Fox Foundation. It will be conducting its campaign on ShareIn, a UK-based equity crowdfunding platform. The exact launch date has not been announced yet, but will be in September 2014.
