CPP is a global public-private partnership initiated in 2015 consisting of industry, multiple nonprofit organizations, academic partners, and advisors (FDA, EMA, NIH, and people living with Parkinson’s), with the goal of accelerating the path to approval of therapies that improve the lives of people with Parkinson’s.
Parkinson’s affects over 10 million individuals worldwide, but there is currently no cure and only limited treatments to manage its progression, which impacts both motor and nonmotor functions. This wide range of manifestations makes it difficult to both fully capture the real-life experiences of individuals living with Parkinson’s and to measure the efficacy of drugs in clinical trials in this heterogeneous population.
Existing approaches and measures used to evaluate Parkinson’s fail to capture the aspects of the disease that hold genuine significance for people living with Parkinson’s and their care partners. Thus, there is an urgent need to redefine and expand our understanding of the early stages of Parkinson’s.
The focus on the impact of early-stage Parkinson’s Disease (PD) will enable us to reach a greater number of individuals affected by the disease and effectively address their specific needs, ensuring improved outcomes and a better quality of life.
The goal of the CPP Consortium is to broadly advance the drug development landscape for Parkinson’s prevention and treatment by working collaboratively with the Parkinson’s Disease global community to share data, knowledge, and resources towards the development and regulatory endorsement of novel drug development tools.
We do this by prioritizing efforts focused on broadening populations for trial recruitment, collecting, understanding, and sharing real-world data, and by leveraging innovative technologies to capture what truly matters.
With a focus on the “right drug, right patient, right time” approach, CPP streamlines regulatory processes to optimize drug development with greater efficiency in advancing data-driven solutions for clinical trials. CPP aims to align with regulatory strategies spanning from model-informed drug development, patient-focused drug development, digital heath technologies, biomarkers, and real-world data.
Accelerating effective treatments for Parkinson’s by engaging with regulators to foster advancements in research for expanded treatment options.
Empowering researchers with comprehensive patient-level data for enhanced Parkinson’s research and optimized clinical trial design.
Pioneering accurate diagnosis, personalized treatments, and patient-centric advancements for improved outcomes in Parkinson’s care.
Optimizing device-agnostic Digital Health Technologies for Parkinson’s research, empowering drug development, gaining valuable insights.
The database includes integrated and standardized data from both PD observational studies and randomized clinical trials and contains thousands of participants’ data, anonymized and deidentified. The database covers over 600 variables, such as demographic information, clinical measures, medication usage data, dropouts, and more.
The CPP integrated database is rich in patient-level outcome measures and includes item level patient level data. It contains limited biomarker and genetics data and does not include data collected using digital health technologies. In accordance with the Data Contribution Agreements between CPP and data contributors, CPP is obligated to protect the identity of the individual datasets and provides access to the datasets in aggregate with masked study identifiers.
We would like to thank our collaborators for their generous contributions to the CPP integrated Parkinson’s Database. View acknowledgements.
In March 2025, C-Path launches its newest initiative, Global Evidence in Medicine for Parkinson’s Disease (GEM-PD). This global initiative is dedicated to addressing a critical gap in Parkinson’s research: understanding how the disease uniquely affects women based on sex-specific biological factors. By leveraging cutting-edge data science, digital health technologies, and regulatory science expertise, GEM-PD aims to accelerate the development of more personalized therapies that better serve all individuals living with Parkinson’s.
By focusing on efficient clinical trial design through integration of sex-specific insights into research, regulatory pathways, and therapeutic development, we aim to optimize treatments for all individuals who can benefit from actionable scientific insights that hold promise for developing novel medicines
Through our expansive network and tried-and-true approach to advance data, tools, and global partnerships, we remove the bottlenecks that slow progress in creating drug development solutions for Parkinson’s patients worldwide.
By focusing on these three areas of impact, we aim to enable:
We are grateful for the support that enables us to build on C-Path’s decade of Parkinson’s research and 20 years of advancing drug development across multiple therapeutic areas. GEM-PD will allow us to take our trusted approach to actionable solutions to a new level by investing in advanced Parkinson’s research and development, along with forging critical partnerships to maximize our impact.
We recognize that many diseases could benefit from this approach to treatments. While the current focus is on Parkinson’s, we are actively exploring opportunities to expand the initiative to other areas. We will keep the community informed of any future developments.
As we lay the foundation for GEM-PD, we will have opportunities to collaborate, including partnerships, donations, and other ways to support groundbreaking research in Parkinson’s disease.
Over the coming months, we look forward to keeping C-Path partners and the community involved on our progress and impact. Stay in touch by subscribing below and following our LinkedIn, X, Facebook, and YouTube.
We welcome additional investments to amplify this transformative initiative. If your organization is interested in joining the journey, please reach out to us, and for individual donations, visit our Give page.
This quantitative clinical trial enrichment tool helps optimize clinical trial design in the early-motor stages of Parkinson’s, using MDS-UPDRS part III as the primary endpoint. For scientists and clinicians of all backgrounds, a cloud-based graphical user interface (GUI) has been developed, which allows a user-friendly experience to perform simulations based on the model.
Regulatory endorsement relieves trial sponsors of the burden of having to convince the regulators that methods are reliable and reproducible and could accelerate effective patient treatments. Tools endorsed by regulators save time and money, which incentivizes more trials, which results in increased chances of getting more Parkinson’s disease treatments approved, and directly impacts people in need. To view CPP’s regulatory accomplishments and Impact Videos from those living with this disease, please click here.
Fatta Nahab, MD, FAAN, FANA
Neuron23
Diane Stephenson, PhD
Vice President of Neurology, Executive Director, Critical Path for Parkinson
Klaus Romero, MD, MS
Chief Executive Officer, Chief Science Officer
J. Rubin Abrams, PhD
Quantitative Medicine Scientist
Roopal Bhatnagar, MS
Data Analyst II, Data Collaboration Center
Laura Carrillo, MPH
Senior Project Manager, Critical Path for Parkinson’s Consortium
Kimberly Collins, PhD
Senior Quantitative Scientist, Pharmacometrics
Shasta Jorgensen, MPH
Senior Project Manager
Grace Lee, PhD
Quantitative Medicine Scientist
Erin Lowry
Senior Project Coordinator, Critical Path for Parkinson’s Consortium
Ragasudha Botta, MD, PhD
Senior Scientific Director, Critical Path for Parkinson’s Consortium
Albert Barrera, M.H.Sc
Data Collaboration Center
Sakshi Sardar, PhD
Quantitative Medicine Scientist, Quantitative Medicine
Mussie Akalu
Data Manager IV, Data Collaboration Center
For more information on the Critical Path for Parkinson’s (CPP) Consortium, please contact CPP Executive Director Dr. Diane Stephenson at DStephenson@c-path.org.
