Commentary
Video
A Clinical Preview of 2024 for Movement Disorders: Kelly Papesh, DNP, APRN, FNP-BC
Author(s):
The clinical director of Parkinson & Movement Disorder Alliance shared her thoughts on potential therapies to increase management care options for patients with Parkinson disease. [WATCH TIME: 5 minutes]
WATCH TIME: 5 minutes
“As a clinician, when I look into 2024, there are pipeline therapies that are right now being reviewed by the FDA and hopefully coming to market in 2024. This provides hope for our community and an opportunity for clinicians to offer new therapies that maybe a patient who before wasn't responding to the right treatment, now may have an opportunity to get the right management.”
In 2024, the field of movement disorders is expecting new research updates and pending approvals on potential therapies for conditions such as tardive dyskinesia, Huntington disease, and Parkinson disease (PD). Clinical trials for PD research have advanced the field over the years, shedding new light on the cellular pathways that contribute to the pathogenesis of PD and offer increasingly compelling targets for potential therapeutics.1 Despite the progress in research and investigations of therapies for patients with PD, there remains to be a disease-modifying treatment approved to slow, stop, or reverse disease progression for those with this condition.
Researchers are continuing their pursuit in 2024 to study active and passive immunotherapy approaches with the goal of modifying the spread of α-synuclein pathology in the brain in patients with PD. According to a review previously published in the journal of Neurotherapeutics, currently available treatments proposed to have potential disease-modifying effects for PD included calcium channel blockers, antioxidants, anti-inflammatory agents, iron-chelating agents, glucagon-like peptide 1 agonists, and cAbl tyrosine kinase inhibitors.1 Investigators noted that these treatments offer mechanistic diversity and hope for patients, however, trials assessing them have not produced significant findings.
Recently, Kelly Papesh, DNP, APRN, FNP-BC, the clinical director of the Parkinson & Movement Disorder Alliance (PMD Alliance), sat down in an interview with NeurologyLive® to share her clinical perspective on what she is excited about in 2024 for the movement disorder community, specifically for patients with PD. Papesh, also the executive director of the Association of Movement Disorder Advanced Practice Providers, talked about how the FDA is currently reviewing potential therapies for the pipeline in 2024 to provide new opportunities for managing PD. She spoke about the role of research in targeting α-synuclein in the quest for disease-modifying therapies, and how close the field is to achieving this goal. Additionally, Papesh discussed the ways the movement disorders community is leveraging online forums and government initiatives to enhance patient care and support networks in 2024.
