Dr. Priti Gros, University of Toronto
Clinical Research Fellowship (2022 – 2024), $150,000
Project description:
Dr. Priti Gros from the University of Toronto, alongside her co-supervisors Dr. Connie Marras and Dr. Susan Bronskill, studies how real-world data can be used to improve clinical trials for disease-modifying therapies in Parkinson’s disease (PD). Real-world data (i.e. information routinely collected during everyday healthcare encounters) can help researchers design future trials and understand how treatments perform outside of controlled research settings.
Over the past two decades, numerous clinical trials for PD have tested promising therapies to delay disease progression, but none have demonstrated definitive long-term benefit. This raises a critical question: are these experimental drugs truly ineffective, or are we failing to study them in ways that reflect their impact on Parkinson’s disease unfolds in the real world? Their research addresses this question by showing how real-world data can help to rethink PD clinical trials through a series of studies: from who is recruited, to how progression is measured, to which potential therapies to test, and informing how clinical trials could be designed in the future.
Dr. Gros, Marras, and Bronskill are currently reviewing the literature and examining how randomized clinical trials have incorporated real-world data in their design not only within the field of neurology but also other medical fields. This involved reviewing trials that incorporated data such as health records, disease registries or health administrative data to support trial planning, follow-up, or outcome measurement. This work helps outline how real-world data can be thoughtfully integrated into clinical trials and potentially reduce cost, improve length of follow-up and capture meaningful outcomes.
Dr Priti Gros is a movement disorders neurologist and clinical associate at Toronto Western Hospital. She is currently a PhD student in Clinical Epidemiology and Healthcare Research, supervised by Dr. Connie Marras and Dr. Susan Bronskill. She is passionate about how real-world data can support clinical trials for disease-modifying therapies in Parkinson’s. Beyond her PhD, she is passionate about non-pharmacological therapies in Parkinson’s and is involved in the Dancing with Parkinson’s Boards of Directors.