The substantial four year funding awarded allows Dr O’Keeffe to recruite a postdoctoral researcher and a PhD student to work on identifying novel drugs and drug targets for Parkinson’s disease. Parkinson’s is a common, progressive neurodegenerative disease characterised by the degeneration of specific populations of neurons which lead to profound motor and late stage cognitive impairments. Current treatments provide symptomatic relief, however their effectiveness wear off over time and their pro-longed use leads to disabling side effects. There is therefore a critical need to develop new drugs and drugs targets to protect against degeneration in Parkinson's. This is important as in Europe, 1.2 million people have Parkinson’s disease, which has a total socioeconomic cost of €13.9 billion per annum, which will double by 2030 as the population ages.