Author | Lightnews

The Barker Lab @thebarkerlabgroup.bsky.social · 1d

@hdbuzzfeed.bsky.social have released an article regarding the UniQure press release 3rd Nov. “This is a regulatory misalignment, not a scientific setback. It reflects the slow, iterative nature of drug development. Progress continues, just on a different timetable.”
en.hdbuzz.net/uniqure-and-...

UniQure and FDA No Longer in Alignment on Approval Pathway for AMT-130 – HDBuzz

en.hdbuzz.net

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The Barker Lab @thebarkerlabgroup.bsky.social · 5d

See here a recent Alzforum article ‘Trials Rekindle Interest in Cell Replacement for Parkinson’s’ featuring our recently published TransEUro paper!
www.alzforum.org/news/researc...

Trials Rekindle Interest in Cell Replacement for Parkinson’s | ALZFORUM

www.alzforum.org

The Barker Lab @thebarkerlabgroup.bsky.social · 6d

Last Tuesday Roger undertook another Research Spotlight with the WPC, chatting to Professor Lynn Rochester from Newcastle about life in research and the work on digital monitoring and gait in PD. The recordings are out, if you are interested go have a listen!
www.worldpdcoalition.org/page/WPCRese...

www.worldpdcoalition.org

The Barker Lab @thebarkerlabgroup.bsky.social · 7d

Jamie, one of our 1st year PhD students, presented at the Clinical Neurosciences Postgraduate Seminars on Friday 24th October! His presentation is titled Using Transcriptomics to Understand the Role of Neuroinflammation in Early Parkinson's and Atypical Parkinsonian Disorders PSP & CBD

The Barker Lab @thebarkerlabgroup.bsky.social · 8d

The ARIA team were at a meeting last Friday in London and met up with teams from UPenn and imperial to discuss their projects.
Today Roger, Xiaoling and Sarah Howlett are meeting locally to discuss in more detail, led by George Malliaras in Cambridge and Clara from Malin Parmar's group in Lund.

The Barker Lab @thebarkerlabgroup.bsky.social · 15d

Angelica and Sophie attended the Gordon Research Conference in trinucleotide expansion disorders in Tuscany Italy during May this year! They both presented posters and had a lovely time exploring Italy!

Reposted by The Barker Lab

ISSCR @isscr.org · 21d

Registration and abstract submission are now open for the ISSCR 2026 Annual Meeting, co-sponsored by STEMCELL Technologies! Join us in Montréal, Canada, 8-11 July 2026. Explore the program, speakers, and all the opportunities the meeting offers 👉 www.isscr2026.org

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The Barker Lab @thebarkerlabgroup.bsky.social · 16d

Roger and Zanna went to an exciting meeting at Claire Hall on 15th October organised by Barbara Sahakian. A team from Cambridge neuroscience met with a like minded team from Fudan University in China. Roger talked about the work of our group including the sleep studies in HD being led by Zanna.

Reposted by The Barker Lab

UCL Faculty of Brain Sciences @uclbrainscience.bsky.social · 20d

5/📽️ Find out more about how the trial works in this video explainer from @cureparkinsons.org.uk. 👇
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBJj...

EJS ACT-PD: the world's largest clinical trial for Parkinson's

The Edmond J Safra Accelerating Clinical Trials for Parkinson’s Disease (EJS ACT-PD) platform aims to transform the way we conduct Parkinson’s clinical trials in the UK. As a multi-arm, multi-stage…

www.youtube.com

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Reposted by The Barker Lab

UCL Faculty of Brain Sciences @uclbrainscience.bsky.social · 20d

🧵1/ The world’s largest-ever clinical trial to slow or stop Parkinson’s disease has officially launched — led by researchers at @uclqsion.bsky.social and @newcastleuni.bsky.social. A major milestone in the fight against neurodegeneration.
www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2025/oc...

Largest-ever Parkinson’s disease trial opens across UK

The world’s largest-ever clinical trial of treatments to slow or stop the progression of Parkinson’s disease has launched, led by researchers at UCL and Newcastle University.

www.ucl.ac.uk

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The Barker Lab @thebarkerlabgroup.bsky.social · 19d

Roger's in Luxembourg celebrating 10 years of the NCER-PD, for which he was part of the SAB. The meeting entitled Advancing from Precision Medicine towards Prevention in PD. He gave the keynote lecture this morning on dopamine cell therapies in Parkinson's. See more here: www.uni.lu/lcsb-en/news...

The Barker Lab @thebarkerlabgroup.bsky.social · 20d

Great seeing Andy & Nicola Tuesday for STEM-PD. After Andy and Roger completed an interview for a new ISSCR teaching module which should be released in the first half of next year!
Check out Andy’s blog ‘Parkinson's with a Purpose’ which talks about his experience with PD and research: pwap.blog

The Barker Lab @thebarkerlabgroup.bsky.social · 21d

Postgraduate students of the Barker lab had a great time at the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute Postgraduate symposium on the 13th and 14th of October! Our final year PhD students Jana and Athena gave a talk on their work and 2nd year PhD student Angelica presented a poster.

The Barker Lab @thebarkerlabgroup.bsky.social · 27d

Huge Congratulations to Chiara Properzi who graduated on the 24th of September, she is officially a Doctor of Medicine & Surgery! She completed her research project with us from May to August 2025, investigating speech alterations in patients with Huntington’s disease using AI-based algorithms.Yay!

The Barker Lab @thebarkerlabgroup.bsky.social · 28d

Emma Cutting our Senior Trial Coordinator is back at work! After her time away, we are all so delighted to see her!

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The Barker Lab @thebarkerlabgroup.bsky.social · Oct 6

Roger and Malin Parmar (his long standing colleague from Lund) have just published this invited short commentary on the recent stem cell dopamine cell therapy trials that were published in Nature earlier this month!
See article here: academic.oup.com/brain/articl...

Stem cell-derived dopamine cell therapies for Parkinson’s disease: what have the first trials shown?

This scientific commentary refers to ‘Phase I/II trial of iPS-cell-derived dopaminergic cells for Parkinson’s disease’ by Sawamoto et al. (https://doi.org/

academic.oup.com

Reposted by The Barker Lab

Zanna Voysey @zannavoysey.bsky.social · Oct 1

In @thebarkerlabgroup.bsky.social we’re friends as much as colleagues, and horse riders as much as scientists.

This time Miriam and I cranked things up a notch, taking things international…
#phdcelebration #2gazellesranchmorocco

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Reposted by The Barker Lab

Zanna Voysey @zannavoysey.bsky.social · Oct 1

In @thebarkerlabgroup.bsky.social we’re friends as much as colleagues, and horse riders as much as scientists.

This time Miriam and I cranked things up a notch, taking things international…
#phdcelebration #2gazellesranchmorocco

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The Barker Lab @thebarkerlabgroup.bsky.social · Oct 3

Congratulations Saeed for winning the Parse Neuroscience Single cell grant program!!🎉
Saeed will use this grant to better understand how human microglia interact with allogeneic dopaminergic neurones

The Barker Lab @thebarkerlabgroup.bsky.social · Sep 30

Following the BBC news article reporting on the uniQure results the EHDN have released a statement from their chairs discussing this. If you are interested to find out who was involved, what we don't yet know and the next steps, see the full statement on their website.
ehdn.org/statement-fr...

Statement from EHDN Chairs on uniQure’s Topline Results – European Huntington's Disease Network

ehdn.org

The Barker Lab @thebarkerlabgroup.bsky.social · Sep 29

Roger is talking at ASU-Banner Neurodegenerative Disease Research Conference in Phoenix. While out he met Eli the executive director from the WPC. They discussed the 7th WPC Congress happening in Phoenix May 2026 - anyone with an interest in Parkinson's is encouraged to come along!
wpc2026.org

The Barker Lab @thebarkerlabgroup.bsky.social · Sep 25

Roger responds to exciting trial news on HD as reported on the BBC
Expert reaction to announcement by uniQure of topline results from a phase I/II study of a gene therapy to slow Huntington’s disease progression
See all reactions in Science Media Centre:
www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-react...

The Barker Lab @thebarkerlabgroup.bsky.social · Sep 24

Roger was at a workshop over the last 2 days in London run by ARIA exploring novel ways to treat disorders of the brain including devices. A great mix of clinical people, biologists and engineers.

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The Barker Lab @thebarkerlabgroup.bsky.social · Sep 22

Roger met with his long standing friend Jihwan Song from Seoul last week when Jihwan was passing through the UK. Jihwan works on stem cells and Huntington's disease and Roger took him out to a traditional pub!

The Barker Lab @thebarkerlabgroup.bsky.social · Sep 17

Roger was in Zurich yesterday on an appointments committee for a new Professor of Neuroregeneration at the Institute of Regenerative Medicine (background in picture)

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