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Mario Aguilar covers technology in health care, including artificial intelligence, virtual reality, wearable devices, telehealth, and digital therapeutics. His stories explore how tech is
changing the practice of health care and the business and policy challenges to realizing tech’s promise. He’s also the co-author of the free, twice weekly STAT Health Tech newsletter. You
can reach Mario on Signal at mariojoze.13. NEW YORK — On the 77th floor of One World Trade Center, in an office with panoramic views of Manhattan, executives from pharma and biotech
companies like Regeneron and Merck heard the pitch: Please help us study GLP-1s in Parkinson’s disease. With the explosion in popularity of diabetes and weight loss drugs like Ozempic and
Zepbound, GLP-1 receptor agonist drugs have been hyped as potential miracle cures for many diseases. GLP-1s are being studied for cardiovascular disease, liver conditions, kidney disease,
and Alzheimer’s. Older approved GLP-1s from Novo Nordisk, Sanofi, and Amylin have been or are being explored for Parkinson’s. But amid all the jostling to find the next use case for GLP-1s,
the proposition in October — the day before the Michael J. Fox Foundation’s annual meeting in New York — came from an unlikely source: Koneksa Health, which helps drug developers use
smartphone apps and wearables to study whether their treatments work. Koneksa hatched a plan to study GLP-1 with its tools after researchers in April published results of a randomized
control trial showing that people with Parkinson’s on Sanofi GLP-1 drug Lixisenatide saw no worsening of motor symptoms over a year, compared to those on placebo who did. STAT+ Exclusive
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