Parkinson’s disease is one of the world’s fastest growing neurological conditions, with 166,000 people affected in the UK today. It causes difficulty with movement, such as slowness, stiffness and tremor, and other symptoms such as depression, memory problems, bladder and bowel difficulties and sleep disturbance. Parkinson’s is degenerative and symptoms become increasingly severe and debilitating as the condition progresses. Drug therapy is available but it just slows down the progression and is no free form side effects. The world’s largest-ever clinical trial of treatments to slow or stop the progression of Parkinson’s disease has now launched, led by researchers at UCL and Newcastle University.
The £26 million project is accelerating the search for effective treatments with an innovative, flexible trial design testing multiple treatments in parallel. By testing more drugs more efficiently than ever before, the trial could take up to three years off the time needed to test a drug candidate. The trial team is recruiting up to 1,600 participants in its first phase from more than 40 hospitals across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The trial is now underway, as participants are already being recruited at the London (UCLH) and Newcastle (Clinical Ageing Research Unit) sites, with the other trial sites to get underway between now and next April. People with Parkinson’s can register their interest in participating using a simple online form.
The Edmond J Safra Accelerating Clinical Trials in Parkinson’s Disease (EJS ACT-PD) trial is sponsored by UCL and funded by a Medical Research Council (MRC) and National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) partnership, Cure Parkinson’s, The Michael J. Fox Foundation, Parkinson’s UK, The John Black Charitable Foundation, The Gatsby Charitable Foundation and Van Andel Institute.The new EJS ACT-PD trial is using a multi-arm, multi-stage design, enabling several treatments to be tested at the same time, in comparison to a single group of participants taking a placebo, a method which has not been used before for Parkinson’s.
Initially, the trial will be testing two safe drugs: a blood pressure medication and a drug used to treat IPB. By analysing results on an ongoing basis, ineffective treatments can be identified and dropped from the trial, with more promising drugs progressing. The design’s flexibility also allows new treatment arms to be introduced within the same trial infrastructure. The current standard clinical trials process is hugely time and resource consuming and stop-start in nature, taking up to 10 years for a single potential treatment to complete assessment. Compared to running individual trials for each treatment, the structure of this trial can accelerate the assessment process up to 3 years.
People with Parkinson’s, their partners and carers and community representatives have been involved in every aspect of the trial design. The trial will begin by testing two repurposed drugs: telmisartan, a medication for high blood pressure, and terazosin, most commonly used to treat an enlarged prostate. The scientists aim to add a third drug, ursodeoxycholic acid, currently used for liver disease, in 2026. The trial, sponsored and managed by the MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL, is now underway, with participants already being recruited at the Leonard Wolfson Experimental Neuroscience Centre, UCL, supported by the NIHR UCLH Biomedical Research Centre, and at the Clinical Ageing Research Unit in Newcastle.
The trial aims to recruit a participant population that is representative of people with Parkinson’s in the UK. The trial will recruit people with Parkinson’s who were diagnosed aged 30 or older, are taking dopaminergic treatment, and who have not had deep brain stimulation surgery nor infusion treatments. Eligible participants, once they start taking medication, will be invited to study visits, either in-person or remotely, every six months for up to three years. Trial medication will be delivered to participants’ homes to reduce travel burden, particularly for those living in rural areas or with mobility issues.
- Edited by Dr. Gianfrancesco Cormaci, PhD, specialist in Clinical Biochemistry.
Scientific references
Gonzalez-Robles C et al. Mov Disord. 2025; 40(7):1307-17.
Shtilbans A et al. Antioxidants (Basel). 2025 Mar; 14(4):396.
Riley MJ et al. PNAS USA. 2024 Feb; 121(9):e2318956121.
Ray B, Tuladhar S et al. J Integr Neurosci. 2024; 23(2):29.
Lage L et al. NPJ Parkinsons Dis. 2024 Feb 17; 10(1):37.
