🧬 Verily Secures $14.7M Grant to Advance Personalized Parkinson’s Research

Verily has been awarded a $14.7 million grant from The Michael J. Fox Foundation to enhance its Personalized Parkinson’s Project (PPP)—a large-scale initiative focused on integrating digital, biological, and clinical data to transform Parkinson’s disease research and care.

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🔍 Key Highlights

Comprehensive Data Collection:

The expanded PPP will combine genomic, proteomic, metabolomic, imaging, and biospecimen analyses with long-term clinical tracking. Over 500 participants have already been enrolled since 2016.

Wearable Integration:

Verily’s Study Watch continuously captures real-world data on movement, heart rate, and sleep, providing digital biomarkers that will be analyzed alongside molecular and imaging data.

Open Research Access:

All resulting datasets will be made available to the global scientific community to accelerate biomarker discovery, disease modeling, and therapeutic development.

Focus on Mechanistic Insights:

The project aims to identify new molecular pathways and patient subtypes by analyzing interactions between genetics, inflammation, metabolism, and neurodegeneration.

1. 🧬 Multimodal Biomarker Discovery in Parkinson’s Disease

Combining genomic, proteomic, metabolomic, and immunologic data enables researchers to detect early molecular signatures of Parkinson’s. Neurologists should understand how this layered approach may support subtype classification, prediction of disease progression, and personalized therapy development.

2. ⌚ Digital Phenotyping with Wearables in Movement Disorders

Verily’s Study Watch captures high-resolution physiological and motor data continuously in naturalistic settings. This supports real-time analysis of gait, tremor, bradykinesia, and sleep — offering more sensitive, ecologically valid endpoints than periodic clinical exams.

3. 🧠 The Role of Longitudinal Cohorts in Parkinson’s Research

Projects like PPP provide deep, time-linked datasets across hundreds of participants, critical for understanding disease trajectory. Neurologists involved in trials or biomarker development benefit from insights into natural history, progression modeling, and preclinical symptom emergence.

4. 🔬 Integration of Immunologic and Metabolic Pathways in PD Pathogenesis

Emerging evidence suggests that neuroinflammation, peripheral immune activation, and mitochondrial dysfunction play roles in PD. PPP’s multi-omic approach offers the opportunity to map these interactions at the individual level — a key step toward identifying new therapeutic targets.

5. 🧪 Data Sharing Platforms and Precision Neurology Infrastructure

Verily’s Workbench platform will make de-identified, high-dimensional data available to the global research community. For neurologists engaged in translational research, this sets a model for open science, reproducibility, and machine learning integration in neurology.

📚 References

1. Verily. (2024). Personalized Parkinson’s Project overview. Internal project documentation and public research communications.
2. Bloem, B. R., et al. (2021). Parkinson’s disease.The Lancet, 397(10291), 2284–2303.
   – Comprehensive review of PD pathology, subtypes, and research needs.
3. Del Tredici, K., & Braak, H. (2016). Review: Sporadic Parkinson's disease: development and distribution of α-synuclein pathology.Neuropathology and Applied Neurobiology, 42(1), 33–50.
4. Marek, K., et al. (2018). The Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI): Establishing a PD biomarker cohort.Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology, 5(12), 1460–1477.
   – Foundational cohort-based approach to biomarker research in PD.
5. Dorsey, E. R., & Bloem, B. R. (2018). The Parkinson Pandemic—A Call to Action.JAMA Neurology, 75(1), 9–10.
6. Bot, B. M., et al. (2016). Mobile health technologies for precision medicine.NPJ Digital Medicine, 1(1), 1–8.
   – Early validation of wearables like Verily’s Study Watch in clinical research.
7. Troncoso-Escudero, P., et al. (2020). Neuroinflammation in Parkinson’s disease: A review.Journal of Neuroinflammation, 17(1), 1–19.
8. Svenningsson, P., et al. (2022). Inflammation in Parkinson’s disease: cause or consequence?Nature Reviews Neurology, 18(9), 535–547.
9. Liu, X., et al. (2022). Multi-omics profiling reveals immune and metabolic alterations in Parkinson's disease.Nature Aging, 2(5), 455–469.
10. Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. (2024). Program highlights and research funding strategy.