Biomarkers are characteristics that can be objectively measured, evaluated and used as indicators of disease progression or the effect of a therapy. There are no current clinical measures for Friedreich’s ataxia (FA) that can robustly measure disease progression in short timescales. This means that clinical trials are a lengthy process and drug development is slow. For that reason it is important to develop new biomarkers which are able to measure disease progression in shorter a time frame and could therefore speed up the process of drug development. There is much focus on this research internationally and in 2018 the US Friedreich’s ataxia charity FARA held a Biomarker Meeting reflecting on the current state of the development of these biomarkers and a summary of the findings has been released as an open access paper, available here.
Posted on 16/08/2019
