February 2025 update

In short

Final data came in from the first participant's six-month follow-up brain scan at Washington University in St. Louis. It showed a 21.2% increase in blood flow to the substantia nigra in that one participant. More participants were having follow-up scans.

The February 2025 update gave the final figure from the first participant's follow-up brain scan. Six months after he was first dosed with FGF-1, blood flow to the substantia nigra had increased by 21.2% compared with the scan taken before dosing. The scans were done at Washington University in St. Louis using functional MRI, a type of scan that can measure blood flow.

The team's hypothesis

Dan Montano, the chief executive, set out the thinking behind the research. Most Parkinson's experts agree that the dopamine-producing nerve cells in the substantia nigra, a small region deep in the brain, make too little dopamine to control movement.

The open question is why. The team's view was that reduced blood flow leaves those cells short of nourishment and oxygen and slows the removal of waste. He acknowledged that the cause of Parkinson's is not settled among experts.

He described the brain's smallest blood vessels, the capillaries. They are so narrow that red blood cells have to squeeze through, and their walls are a single cell thick. He wrote that no mechanical procedure can repair vessels that small, so the only route is the body's own ability to grow new ones. The update said the body makes its own FGF-1 to start that repair process after an injury.

The substantia nigra itself is tiny. Mr. Montano wrote that about 25 of them would fit inside a golf ball, and that each holds roughly 500,000 dopamine-producing nerve cells.

A milestone and the scan report

The update said that as of February 17, 2025, Zhittya had dosed more than 200 people with Parkinson's in its research studies. It said many had reported improvements, and it pointed readers to the participant comments for their own accounts. The question the team wanted to answer was why.

The report on the first imaging participant compared a baseline scan with a second scan six months after dosing. Mr. Montano cautioned that this kind of measurement is still young. He wrote that the analysis software was built to track declining blood flow in this region, not an increase, so the figures should be read as a work in progress.

The participant was scheduled for further scans at 12 and 18 months. Three more participants with Parkinson's had completed their first scan and were being dosed, so more scans were under way.

The update added that the company regarded the full study data as proprietary and would not release copies.

Dr. Jacobs on the images

Dr. Jack Jacobs, the company's president, explained how hard this measurement is. The substantia nigra is about half the size of a pea. Capillaries are 5 to 10 microns wide, compared with about 75 microns for a fine human hair, and red blood cells pass through them in single file. He wrote that it would not take much narrowing to disrupt flow and leave tissue short of oxygen.

He described the images in the update: areas of low blood flow appeared in red, areas of high flow in yellow, and the substantia nigra was outlined in white. In the second scan, more of the outlined area appeared in yellow. He stressed that there were no guarantees the increase would last in this participant or that other participants would show similar results. He wrote that data from 100 participants would give far greater confidence.

The update shared comments from participants on topics that included speech, hand stiffness, clearer thinking, energy, balance and walking. Mr. Montano wrote that the brain research was advancing in a cautious and deliberate way. The update also reported the start of small studies in other research areas, including one in nerve pain of the feet.

This summary covers the Parkinson's research in the February 2025 update. The complete update, including the other topics it covered, is below.