AstronauTx Ltd, a UK-based biotechnology company, announced on Tuesday that it has received funding from The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research (MJFF), and that Parkinson's UK is funding an additional complementary research effort in collaboration with University College London (UCL).

The MJFF-funded project, titled 'Ligand-Gated Ion Channel Modulation as a Disease-Modifying Treatment for Prodromal Synucleinopathies', will explore whether enhancing restorative sleep mechanisms using novel compounds developed by AstronauTx can reduce the accumulation of pathological proteins linked to Parkinson's disease. In particular, REM Sleep Behaviour Disorder (RBD) is a recognised early indicator of Parkinson's disease, and AstronauTx aims to generate data supporting the development of one of its compounds as a potential disease-modifying treatment for this prodromal stage of Parkinson's disease, where there may be a significant opportunity to influence disease progression.

The MJFF grant was awarded through the Foundation's Parkinson's Disease Therapeutics Pipeline Program, which supports preclinical and translational research aimed at evaluating promising therapeutic approaches and advancing them toward clinical development.

In parallel, Parkinson's UK is funding a complementary project with UCL to investigate whether increasing slow-wave sleep can enhance the brain's natural waste-clearance pathways. The Parkinson's UK-funded study, titled 'Measuring the Effects of Increasing Slow-Wave Sleep Using a Novel Mechanism on Glymphatic Transport of Alpha-Synuclein in a Parkinson's Disease Mouse Model', will evaluate whether a novel sleep-enhancing compound that increases slow-wave activity and enhances glymphatic flow results in the removal of the neurotoxic protein alpha-synuclein from the brain.