Immune Profiling Insights Program Grant

Michael J. Fox Foundation
The Michael J. Fox Foundation (MJFF) exists for one reason: to accelerate the next generation of Parkinson’s disease (PD) treatments. In practice, that means identifying and funding projects most vital to patients; spearheading solutions around seemingly intractable field-wide challenges; coordinating and streamlining the efforts of multiple, often disparate, teams; and doing whatever it takes to drive faster knowledge turns for the benefit of every life touched by PD.
Objective
This program supports research that deepens understanding of how specific components of the immune system contribute to Parkinson’s disease risk, onset and progression. The goal is to pinpoint immune cell populations, signaling pathways and functional states that change throughout the Parkinson's continuum. The program also seeks to understand how these immune features connect to clinical outcomes and disease progression, driving future therapeutic targeting and patient selection for future clinical studies.
MJFF will prioritize proposals that:
Use validated immunophenotyping and functional assays on banked biosamples (e.g., PBMCs, CSF-derived cells, GI immune cells) to generate mechanistic, hypothesis-driven data clarifying immune involvement in PD risk, onset or progression.
Leverage and strengthen collaborations that enable access to diverse, well-characterized PD cohorts (genetic, idiopathic, prodromal/at-risk), utilizing existing clinical, genetic and longitudinal data where possible to study immune differences across subtypes and stages.
Integrate immune functional readouts with existing data from established and emerging PD biomarkers or other immune data (such as TSPO imaging, cytokine measurements), aiming to correlate immune signatures with molecular, pathological, or clinical markers to identify immune features linked to disease heterogeneity, progression or patient stratification.