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Associate Director, Laboratory Resources at The Michael J. Fox Foundation
In partnership with
Making an impact
Here, Nicole Polinski and Elisia Clark learn how teamwork and the greater life sciences community have been central to creating crucial tools for Parkinson’s research.
Elisia Clark, Ph.D.
Nicole Polinski, Ph.D.
Director, Laboratory Resources at The Michael J. Fox Foundation
Nicole Polinksi and Elisia Clark both trained as scientists – Polinski has a doctoral degree in neuroscience, and Clark earned one in pharmacology – but their careers have flourished beyond the laboratory bench, connecting scientists, research tools and funding so that critical studies have the support they need.
“That’s our ultimate measure of success: supporting the unmet needs of people and families with Parkinson’s”
Nicole Polinksi, Ph.D.
Elisia Clark
Nicole Polinksi
6m+
people are affected by Parkinsons
$1.5bn
in research funded by MJFF
For Polinski, now director of the Laboratory Resources team at The Michael J. Fox Foundation (MJFF), an organization that supports Parkinson’s disease research, every day involves forging partnerships across the research community. She and Clark, who is associate director of the same team at MJFF, both identify gaps in research tools for Parkinson’s so that researchers have better access to the resources that will help them arrive at their results faster, and can move the needle toward more understanding about Parkinson’s, a complex neurodegenerative disease.
“Collaboration is how MJFF has been able to have such an impact on Parkinson’s disease research,” says Polinksi. Because scientists are often operating with limited resources to investigate research questions, MJFF provides a platform for data sharing and discussion among them, which Clark says has resulted in new research projects that were initiated and funded by the foundation. For example, in one discussion through the platform, a scientist expressed concern that currently available tools weren’t capturing aspects of disease pathology in the tissue of patients with Parkinson’s disease. After hearing this, MJFF initiated and supported a new project to develop the right tools and make them widely available.
“Our collaborative approach has proven successful in developing these difficult tools”
Nicola Polanski, Ph.D.“Our collaborative approach has proven successful in developing these difficult tools”
Nicola Polanski, Ph.D.
And for over 10 years, MJFF has partnered with global life science company abcam, which has developed reagents – substances that are used for biological analyses – that have been used thousands of times in MJFF-backed research projects across hundreds of labs. The foundation acts as a facilitator, connecting abcam’s research tools with the research community that needs them.
“We develop tools at the cutting edge of research and select projects that have historically been challenging, since our collaborative approach has proven successful in developing these difficult tools,” adds Polinski.
Several novel drugs to treat Parkinson’s disease have been approved in recent years, and Polinski and Clark say that the community of scientists that surround them has been the key element in making those strides toward helping Parkinson’s patients.
“Because that’s our ultimate measure of success: supporting the unmet needs of people and families with Parkinson’s” Polinksi says. “This has been achieved through collaboration. Not just across research labs, but across research teams in different sectors.”
[Teamwork tactic]
Nicole Polinski and Elisia Clark work as connectors of scientists and research tools that help the scientific community better understand Parkinson’s disease. They eliminate the boundaries between scientists and the resources they need to push Parkinson’s research forward.