The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved AbbVie’s Juvmo (tavapadon), marking the introduction of the first new class of dopaminergic therapy for Parkinson’s disease in decades.
Juvmo is a selective dopamine D1/D5 receptor partial agonist designed to stimulate motor pathways while avoiding the prominent side-effects linked to traditional dopamine agonists, which selectively target D2 and D3 receptors.
Approval by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is still pending.
Formulated as a once-daily oral tablet, the drug is indicated across the Parkinson’s disease continuum - both as an initial monotherapy for newly diagnosed patients and as an add-on therapy alongside standard levodopa regimens.
Oral levodopa has long remained the gold-standard therapy for Parkinson’s motor symptoms, yet around 70% of patients require dose increases within their first year. Over time, these dose escalations frequently trigger motor fluctuations and treatment-induced dyskinesias.
Juvmo addresses this therapeutic plateau: across clinical studies, 93% of patients maintained on Juvmo did not increase their baseline levodopa dosage at 85 weeks, and 94% of patients in early stages were able to defer starting levodopa entirely.
Dr Roopal Thakkar, Executive Vice President of R&D and Chief Scientific Officer at AbbVie, stated: "The approval of JUVMO marks the first dopaminergic breakthrough for Parkinson's disease in decades. People living with Parkinson's and the clinicians who care for them have long faced difficult tradeoffs between motor control, treatment burden and tolerability. Clinicians now have a new treatment option that targets dopamine pathways differently and reduces the difficult tradeoffs associated with D2/D3 selective dopamine agonists."
AbbVie expects Juvmo to become commercially available to patients in the United States in October 2026.
