EP 40 - A Faster Way to Find New Treatments for Parkinson’s?

September 15, 2026

In Episode 40 of Parkinson Weekly, Prof. Bas Bloem explores what he describes as one of the most exciting and encouraging developments in Parkinson’s clinical research: multi-arm, multi-stage (MAMS) clinical trial platforms.As our understanding of the biological processes underlying Parkinson’s disease continues to grow, so too does the number of potential treatments that could target these mechanisms and potentially slow disease progression. The challenge is how to test these promising therapies quickly, efficiently and reliably.Traditional clinical trials can take years, require large numbers of participants and often need a separate placebo group for every treatment being investigated. MAMS platforms offer a different approach, allowing several potential treatments to be tested simultaneously against a shared control group.Crucially, these platforms also incorporate planned interim analyses. Treatments showing little or no evidence of benefit can be stopped early and replaced by new candidates, while those showing promising signals can continue through the trial. The aim is to reduce costs, make better use of participants and, most importantly, identify promising therapies more quickly.Prof. Bloem discusses how this approach has already been successfully used in areas such as cancer and COVID-19, and looks at the growing international movement to bring the same model to neurological diseases.For Parkinson’s disease, he highlights the Edmond J. Safra Accelerating Clinical Trials in Parkinson’s Disease (EJS ACT-PD) platform in the UK, alongside similar initiatives emerging internationally. He also discusses some of the treatments being evaluated through these new trial approaches, including telmisartan, terazosin and UDCA.The episode also considers the challenges involved, from selecting appropriate placebo groups to identifying sensitive biomarkers that can provide an early indication of whether a treatment is working.While these platforms will not change clinical care tomorrow, Prof. Bloem explains why they represent genuine hope for the Parkinson’s community: a smarter, faster and more collaborative way of determining which potential treatments deserve to move forward.Could this new generation of clinical trials help accelerate the search for disease-modifying treatments in Parkinson’s?Have a question you’d like Bas to answer in a future episode? Email us at parkinsonweekly@gmail.com – we’d love to hear from you.