Booster Therapeutics Advances Novel Proteasome-Activating Parkinson’s Therapy Toward First Human Trials

Booster Therapeutics, a biotech company based in Berlin, has just won a major grant —  $5 million — from The Michael J. Fox Foundation to develop a completely new kind of treatment for Parkinson’s disease. This support aims to move their experimental drugs closer to a first‑in‑human trial. What makes Booster’s approach different is that it doesn’t target just one “bad” protein. Instead, their therapy is designed to restore the cell’s own “cleanup machinery,” called the proteasome, to work properly again. In Parkinson’s, proteins in brain cells can become misfolded or “deviant,” and if the proteasome is not working well, these faulty proteins build up and become toxic. Booster’s compounds are built to activate a part of this system — specifically the 20S proteasome — helping the cell identify and break down damaged proteins without the need for the usual tagging process. Current methods often rely on tagging individual disease proteins with a molecule called ubiquitin, and then relying on a complex system (the 26S proteasome) to break them down. Booster’s strategy is more fundamental: it revives the natural quality-control system that recognises many types of unstable proteins on its own. That could be especially useful in complex conditions like Parkinson’s, where multiple proteins might be going wrong at once. Booster’s co‑founder and Chief Scientific Officer, Dr Diogo Feleciano, explained that activating the proteasome may allow cells to clear toxic proteins that otherwise accumulate over time in Parkinson’s disease. If it works, this could help restore a healthier balance in the brain and reduce damage. Thanks to the grant, Booster plans to take one of its lead molecules into a Phase 1 human study. This is the first step toward understanding whether the drug is safe in people and whether it can even begin to do the job it does in the lab: reviving the cell’s clean-up system. This work matters because it tackles one of the root biological problems in Parkinson’s, not just the symptoms. By empowering the cell to manage its own waste, Booster hopes to create a treatment that’s more “system‑wide” in its benefits. It could potentially apply to other age‑related diseases too — not just Parkinson’s — because many of them also involve misfolded proteins. Of course, much still needs to be done. Clinical trials will take time, and whether this approach will truly slow or stop disease progression remains to be seen. But with backing from MJFF, one of the most respected organisations in Parkinson’s research, Booster’s work represents a fresh and promising direction — not a quick fix, but a carefully nurtured idea with the potential to change how we think about treating neurodegenerative diseases.