Impact of Nilotinib on Safety, Tolerability, Pharmacokinetics and Biomarkers in Parkinson's Disease

Summary

Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder causing motor and non-motor symptoms. PD is characterized by death of dopaminergic (DA) neurons in the substantia nigra (SN) pars compacta and formation of inclusions known as Lewy bodies (LBs) that primarily contain aggregated alpha-Synuclein. Nilotinib (Tasigna®, AMN107, Novartis, Switzerland) is approved by U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and is well tolerated for CML treatment at oral doses of 600-800mg daily. Nilotinib penetrates the brain and promotes autophagic degradation of alpha-Synuclein and p-Tau, leading to survival of DA neurons and improvement of motor function in PD models. For these studies, Nilotinib (1-10mg/kg daily) was used at significantly less than the clinically approved dose (up to 1200mg daily) in CML.

Timeline

Start

2017-01

Primary completion

2020-05

Completion

2020-07

Publications

• Results Pagan F, Hebron M, Valadez EH, Torres-Yaghi Y, Huang X, Mills RR, Wilmarth BM, Howard H, Dunn C, Carlson A, Lawler A, Rogers SL, Falconer RA, Ahn J, Li Z, Moussa C. Nilotinib Effects in Parkinson's disease and Dementia with Lewy bodies. J Parkinsons Dis. 2016 Jul 11;6(3):503-17. doi: 10.3233/JPD-160867.
• Joshi D, Kulkarni M, Parekh P, Shah S, Greig NH, Acharya S. Targeting protein kinases in Parkinson's disease: the emerging role of phytoconstituents. Nutr Neurosci. 2025 Dec;28(12):1532-1563. doi: 10.1080/1028415X.2025.2531356. Epub 2025 Jul 18.
• Fowler AJ, Ahn J, Hebron M, Chiu T, Ayoub R, Mulki S, Ressom H, Torres-Yaghi Y, Wilmarth B, Pagan FL, Moussa C. CSF MicroRNAs Reveal Impairment of Angiogenesis and Autophagy in Parkinson Disease. Neurol Genet. 2021 Nov 12;7(6):e633. doi: 10.1212/NXG.0000000000000633. eCollection 2021 Dec.
• Pagan FL, Hebron ML, Wilmarth B, Torres-Yaghi Y, Lawler A, Mundel EE, Yusuf N, Starr NJ, Anjum M, Arellano J, Howard HH, Shi W, Mulki S, Kurd-Misto T, Matar S, Liu X, Ahn J, Moussa C. Nilotinib Effects on Safety, Tolerability, and Potential Biomarkers in Parkinson Disease: A Phase 2 Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Neurol. 2020 Mar 1;77(3):309-317. doi: 10.1001/jamaneurol.2019.4200.

Drugs

Indications