Charting the Next Wave of Advancements in Movement Disorders Care

For clinicians managing a packed clinic schedule who see patients with movement disorders, keeping pace with the rapid advances happening in the field could be a challenge. Northwestern Medicine's 4th Annual Updates in Neurology CME Symposium, held October 9, 2026, in Chicago, Illinois, is built to close that gap. The 1-day event offers an evidence-based refresher spanning the breadth of neurologic disease, from movement disorders and epilepsy to multiple sclerosis and neuro-ophthalmology.

One of the sessions anchoring that agenda is "New Advances in the Management of Movement Disorders," presented by Lucy Morse, MD. During the symposium, Morse's talk will cover the push toward a biological definition of Parkinson disease (PD), a wave of newly approved medication- and device-based therapies, and why she believes referral for specialist or interventional care shouldn't wait until later-stage disease.

Recently, Morse, a movement disorders specialist at Northwestern Medicine, spoke with NeurologyLive® ahead of her session. In the conversation, she talked about where biomarker research stands in PD, which newer therapies clinicians may not yet be using, and the one mindset shift she hopes attendees take back to clinic.

NeurologyLive: Your session covers new advances in the management of movement disorders. What are the most significant shifts you've seen in this space recently, and why did you choose to focus on them for this presentation?

Lucy Morse, MD: We have seen a few main shifts in the movement disorders field over the past several years. I'd say the shift with the greatest potential for field-redefining change relates to efforts in biomarker identification and a biological definition of disease in PD. In neurodegenerative disease, the first critical step towards disease-modifying (DMT) therapy is a valid, reliable biological definition of disease that will allow us to identify and intervene on underlying pathophysiology before symptoms emerge.

A biologically-driven definition of disease for a condition like PD will facilitate identification of presymptomatic or early symptomatic individuals, appropriate stratification in clinical trials, and ultimately intervening on the underlying pathophysiology before symptoms emerge. With the development of α-synuclein driven biological frameworks of disease, progress in detection of α-synuclein and other serum and CSF based biomarkers, and impressive progress in large-scale genotyping in PD, I believe we are getting closer to studying and grouping populations in the right way, at the right time in disease course to finally capture the clinical benefit that we have been chasing in α-synuclein directed therapies and other attempts at DMT therapy.

While this push towards DMT still lives primarily in the investigational space, I also want to highlight the significant growth we have seen in the last several years in currently available mediation-based and interventional/surgical treatments for movement disorders. In only the last 2 years we have seen approval for multiple subcutaneous infusions for PD, approval for bilateral lesional therapies (MR-guided focused ultrasound) in essential tremor (ET) and PD, newly approved surgical targets for MRgFUS, and numerous advances in deep brain stimulation (DBS) technology- including the move in adaptive/closed-loop DBS from investigational to available in clinic.

By highlighting these 2 shifts, one that is primarily investigational and one that has to do with what is available to patients in the present, I hope to impart 2 main points to clinicians taking care of patients with movement disorders. There may be much more available to patients in the way both clinical research opportunities and current therapies than what was available even 1 to 2 years ago.

For clinicians who treat movement disorders but don't specialize in them, what's the one practice or assumption from their current approach you'd most like this session to challenge or update?

The concept that I most want to update is that movement disorders treatment hinges on escalation of oral, symptomatic medications, and that referral for specialist care or interventional therapies is reserved for later-stage disease.

As highlighted above, there is so much available to patients in terms of participation in research and this is particularly true in the earlier stages of disease. Through the PDGeneration study and other studies, we can offer genetic testing to patients that can provide additional information as well as potential therapeutic trial candidacy opportunities. There are current studies and soon to be activated studies seeking out patients with relatively early-stage or even prodromal disease for study of potential disease-modifying therapies.

In terms of interventional therapies, I would not consider DBS or other interventional/advanced therapies as a last resort, and earlier consideration of these treatments is often greatly beneficial. Sometimes we are clearly headed in a direction where we think DBS or MRgFUS is a good option and it often makes sense to at least open this conversation before every single oral medication option is exhausted.

Are there specific therapies, technologies, or diagnostic tools you'll be highlighting that attendees may not yet be using in daily practice?

Absolutely. We will discuss PD biomarkers/diagnostics, including the commercially available CSF and skin-based assays. I think it is important to highlight the difference in their roles on a research basis versus what we know (and don’t know) about how to best use these tests in current clinical practice.

From the perspective of therapies, there are several oral medications, infusion-based therapies, and interventional therapies that have been recently approved. In PD there is a newer IR/ER oral formulation of carbidopa-levodopa (Crexont; Amneal Pharmaceuticals) as well as 2 distinct subcutaneous infusion therapies, 1 that is levodopa-based (Vyalev; AbbVie) and 1 that is apomorphine based for use as an adjunct therapy (Onapgo; Supernus Pharmaceuticals). For our patients with DBS, we are also using a variety of newer technologies including fully remote programming, adaptive/closed-loop DBS, and imaging-based programming.

How do you see these advances changing the treatment landscape for patients over the next few years?

Simply put, we already have a lot more to offer our patients than ever before. We have multiple oral medications for PD and ET with recently released efficacy data that may be FDA approved in the next 6-12 months. We have the anticipated upcoming launch of a platform trial for PD nested within the Parkinson’s Precision Medicine Initiative.

I think we are getting closer and closer to DMT, with gene-directed therapies and alpha-synuclein directed therapies for PD in phase 3 trials, the movement of stem cell-based therapies for PD into phase 3, and exciting progress in the space of other conditions like Huntington disease and genetic ataxias as well. I think it’s possible that we could see some of these therapies make it to the clinic outside of the investigational context in the next few years.

What's the single takeaway you want attendees to leave with and be able to apply the next time they see a patient with a movement disorder?

The one takeaway I hope that attendees leave with is that there is a lot we can offer patients with movement disorders outside of oral levodopa, propranolol, and some of the other tried-and-true symptomatic treatments to which we and our patients are accustomed. If patients are interested in clinical research, if patients are interested in devices or surgical therapies, or simply if a patient’s symptoms aren’t optimized on oral therapies, these may all be reasons to refer or discuss care with your movement disorders colleagues. We are in an exciting and rapidly changing moment in movement disorders, and we are always happy to share updates and information on the newest developments that may benefit our patients!

Transcript edited for clarity. For more information and to register for the symposium, click here.