Potential of Device-Assisted Therapy for Advanced-Stage Parkinson Disease: David Devos, MD, PhD

WATCH TIME: 6 minutes

“The discovery was to prepare, store, and deliver dopamine in an anaerobic environment, and so it's very stable, and then it's working.”

At the 2024 International Congress of Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders (MDS), held September 27-October 1, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, investigators presented clinical data from the phase 1/2 DIVE-I trial, a small-scale study evaluating a new device-assisted therapy as a treatment for Parkinson disease (PD). The trial, which began in 2020, included 12 patients with PD who experienced motor complications. It was a randomized, controlled, open-label crossover trial comprised of 3 phases: an initial feasibility and safety phase (Phase 1), a second phase evaluating efficacy and safety (Phase 2), and a long-term follow-up phase that is still ongoing.

The phase 2 portion of the trial, conducted in collaboration with Lille University Hospital in France, evaluated the percentage of time over 24-hour periods with insufficient control of motor symptoms, recorded at home using a wrist-worn actimetry device. Secondary evaluation criteria included the evolution of ON and OFF fluctuations and dyskinesia assessed using the Dyskinesia Rating Score and Movement Disorder Society-Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale scores, safety, and neuropsychological and psychiatric assessments of behavior.

During the meeting, David Devos, MD, PhD, who presented the study’s findings, sat down to discuss the device-assisted therapy, which delivers dopamine directly to the brain, and its potential for treating PD. Devos, who serves as a neurologist and pharmacologist at CHU de Lille, Lille University, as well as co-founder of InBrain Pharma, detailed how this medication avoids the side effects of oral dopamine treatments by stabilizing dopamine in an anaerobic environment and administering it via a minimally invasive pump. He also described some of the study results, demonstrating significant benefits in symptom control without inducing dyskinesia, a common adverse event of traditional treatments.

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REFERENCE
1. InBrain Pharma to Present Positive Results from Its DIVE-I Phase I/II Clinical Trial for Parkinson’s Disease at the Congress of Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders from September 27 to October 1 in Philadelphia. News release. InBrain Pharma. September 25, 2024. Accessed September 28, 2024. https://www.biospace.com/press-releases/inbrain-pharma-to-present-positive-results-from-its-dive-i-phase-i-ii-clinical-trial-for-parkinsons-disease-at-the-congress-of-parkinsons-disease-and-movement-disorders-from-september-27-to-october-1-in-philadelphia