Michael J. Fox and Sergey Brin Take Their Push for a Parkinson’s Cure to the Next Level
Their anything-and-everything approach is now funded to the tune of $350 million a year.
Randy Schekman, a cell biologist at the University of California at Berkeley, won the 2013 Nobel Prize in medicine for his insights into how yeast cells transport proteins to where they’re needed. Some of that work helped lead to biotech breakthroughs, including new ways to produce insulin and hepatitis vaccines.
Despite his brilliance, and his access to other brilliant scientists and doctors, Schekman sometimes felt helpless after his wife, Nancy Walls, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in the late 1990s. Many of her symptoms were controlled by dopamine-boosting drugs, and later a surgically implanted pacemakerlike device, but that didn’t stop the disease from progressing. By the time Schekman won the Nobel, Walls had developed Parkinson’s-related dementia. In her final months she was often in a zombielike state. She died in her sleep in 2017 at age 68.