Central Ohio Parkinson Society

Your Money At Work By Steve Cantlon

Feb 23, 2003

The COPS board has establisheda Grants Committee consisting of 4 members of the Board of Trustees. The committee's purpose is to evaluate proposals the Board receives requesting research funds. The committee works closely with the Director of the Madden Center of Excellence in McCampbell Hall at OSU who, until recently, was Dr. Jean Hubble. Her successor is Dr. Sandra Kostyk. Both Dr. Hubble and Dr. Kostyk have been very helpful in establishing and maintaining a scientific and medical review committee. The members, on a voluntary basis, provide us with the necessary expertise to evaluate research proposals, which are by definition highly technical.
OSU currently has the largest MRI machine anywhere in the world. It is a one-of-a-kind state of the art machine, which is 4-6 times more powerful than the standard MRI machine. Consequently it is capable of extraordinarily high resolution. One goal is to configure the machine in such a way that a patient placed in it could have a medication administered, and the machine could display the location and behavior of the medication as it enters the brain. The opportunities for diagnostic clarification and medication refinement are enormous. This machine is operating in the early research stages and is supported in part by $25,000 grant from COPS. When this machine is fully operational, it will be in great demand and this grant by COPS not only promotes the research but helps to guarantee that Parkinson's Disease will be in the front of the long line of people and institutions pursuing access.
In addition, COPS has provided Dr. Kostyk with $55,000 in grants to assist and promote her immune system research project. Recent scientific and medical research increasingly suggests that the immune system is heavily involved in the origins and progression of a number of diseases and conditions. Her research would be valuable for this reason alone. However, her project has a more specific focus; which is the immune systems involvement in Parkinson's and Huntington's Disease and the distinction between the two since the two diseases seem to emanate in the same area of the brain. In addition, the immune system seems to have an impact on a patient's presentation of symptoms both psychological and physiological to the doctor. Once again, if this process could be more clearly understood, earlier diagnosis and more precise treatment may be possible.
Finally, COPS anticipates in the not so distant future, being asked to fund a research project that would be a collaboration between OSU and the Cleveland Clinic on Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) outcomes and quality of life issues. This project has been discussed at length but is not yet at the proposal stage. Quality of life issues, especially in the latter stages of Parkinson's, have never been carefully documented and evaluated. However, if that information was available and demonstrated as profound an affect on quality of life as many of us believe it has, it could among other things be used to justify larger amounts of research funds from the National Institute of Health (NIH) among other sources.
Most of the time most of us in the Parkinson community feel that we have no choice but to sit and wait and hope that somewhere someone is doing the right research. Wouldn't it be great if just a few years from now the cure was announced based, at least in part, on research funded by your generous contributions? We believe this $80,000 committment is an important step towards that goal and as donations continue to come in, we hope that committment can increase.
Thanks to all that have contributed their time and money... you ARE making a difference