About Alex

Alex was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease five years ago at age 36. He is a lawyer, ultra athlete, film producer, writer and father of three boys. It all started with a little shaking of his right hand. Parkinson’s disease has changed Alex’s life. He was on an uphill path in his successful career as a lawyer with an attitude that life has many more opportunities and challenges to come.

Parkinson’s disease is now his biggest challenge but it has also given him a new direction. He is raising awareness and funds for Parkinson’s disease that gives many of his fellow sufferers hope and inspiration to keep moving http://www.alexflynn.co.uk .

We don’t know why Alex got the disease so early and we currently don’t have a therapeutic strategy that allows us to treat the cause of his disease and not just his symptoms. The journey of Alex’s skin cells is a personalized approach to find the cause for Parkinson's disease.

Parkinson’s disease can have many different faces: some forms are slowly progressing and the disease has only a minor impact on daily activities for decades, other forms are more aggressive and within a few years patients are bedridden. Patients also respond very differently to the therapies and the type of drugs and the dosage needs to be carefully adjusted because of the changes in effectiveness of the medication over time.

We think that there is a significant need to develop approaches to realize a better understanding of what the underlying causes are in respect of each individual patient –a personalized approach.

Recent advancements in disease modeling allow us to now create patient derived dopamine producing neurons from skin cells; similar to the ones dying in a patient’s brain.

We will take you on a journey to develop a model of Parkinson's disease in a dish from a little piece of skin. Alex has donated a skin biopsy for our stem cell program. We have grown and have banked about 20 Million cells of his skin. Follow us and learn more about the disease and the novel individualized research that lays the foundation for causal treatments.