Active clinical trials for "Autoimmune Diseases"

In this protocol, a combination of MRI, blood, and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) analysis will be used to understand the natural history, underlying immunologic mechanisms, and clinical implications of central nervous system (CNS) lesions, in particular lesions in the cerebral cortex, in multiple sclerosis (MS) and other inflammatory and autoimmune disorders affecting the CNS. Patients with these disorders, as well as healthy controls, will undergo baseline clinical evaluation and testing, bloodwork, and MRI, with follow up clinical evaluation, bloodwork, and MRI at years 1, 3, and 6. Additional MRIs may be performed in patients with possible new lesion formation or to compare MRI techniques. Lumbar puncture will be performed on participants who are not currently being treated with disease modifying therapies and who are willing to undergo the procedure.

This is an exploratory natural history protocol that will enroll patients with known genetic diseases, such as VEXAS syndrome, or as yet undiagnosed disorders of inflammation with the goal of improving our understanding of disease processes. Blood, saliva, hair, nail, or buccal samples may be collected for genetic analysis, blood samples will be obtained for immunologic and other functional studies, and a small number of subjects may undergo skin biopsy.

The aim of this study is to determine the expression of STIM1 in the plasma membrane of lymphocytes from patients suffering from different autoimmune diseases in order to identify new pathologies of interest presenting an over-expression of STIM1PM. This would allow to initiate, following this study, research and development programs on the use of anti-STIM1 antibodies in these identified autoimmune diseases of interest.

Project rationale: Since 2017, multiple sclerosis diagnosis should match the new McDonald criteria in which a "no better explanation than MS" should be fulfilled. However, many patients present with red flags that lead to a complex diagnostic work-up. There are no available biomarkers that permit to confirm or roll out MS diagnosis in such cases. Therefore, we lack biological markers that can help in the diagnosis of patients presenting with suspected MS. Many studies have found that serum and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) cytokines could help to differentiate MS from other diseases such as neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorders (i.e., IL-6) or neurosarcoidosis (i.e., sIL-2R). Serum and CSF kappa free light chains have also shown good diagnosis performance in MS. In daily practice, our MS tertiary center already perform the analysis of CSF concentrations of IL-1β, sIL-2R, IL-6, IL-10, and serum and CSF kappa and lambda free light chains to roll out other central nervous system (CNS) autoimmune diseases in patients presenting with white matter hyperintensities (WMH). Objective: To correlate CSF IL-1β, sIL-2R, IL-6, IL-10, serum and CSF kappa and lambda free light chains with the final diagnosis in patients presenting to our MS tertiary center with suspected MS to identify a specific inflammatory biomarker profil involved in MS and other CNS autoimmune diseases. The methodology: This is an observational study. All patients ongoing a routine diagnostic work-up for suspected MS from june 2020 to june 2022 in our MS tertiary center will be analyzed. Cerebrospinal fluid IL-1β, sIL-2R, IL-6, IL-10, serum and CSF kappa and lambda free light chains will be correlated with the final diagnosis to ultimately find MS associated biomarkers.

Constipation and defecation disorders affect about 15% of the European population and of those up to 30% of the patients over 65 years of age. For those affected, this is associated with major restrictions in quality of life and high health care costs . The underlying causes of constipation and defecation are complex and only partially understood. Intestinal (full wall) resections taken in clinical practice from these patients when conservative therapy has been exhausted show rarefaction of ganglion cell nests in the myenteric plexus and submucosal plexus as well as changes in cholinergic innervation. Initial histopathological investigations suggest an inflammatory genesis of this rarefaction of ganglion cell nests, which will be further characterised/investigated in the context of this study on the basis of further histopathological and serological investigations. This may lead to novel therapeutic approaches that can causally treat the symptoms of those affected.

The aim of this project is to start a biological and clinical collection of patients presenting systemic autoimmune disease. This collection will provide appropriate biological samples to identify new biomarkers and to be accessible to the medical, scientific and industrial communities for the identification of new therapeutic strategies

The purpose of this study is to investigate white blood cells from volunteering donors to support the development of engineered regulatory T cell therapies.

The Mycophenolate Pregnancy Registry is designed as a prospective, observational registry collecting data regarding mycophenolate exposure during pregnancy, and pregnancy outcomes, fetal and infant outcomes after exposure. Early and later term pregnancy outcomes will be solicited at selected gestational time points. Structural and functional birth defects identified in the perinatal period through one year of life will be collected and classified. This is a non-proprietary registry and is a component of a comprehensive pregnancy Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) plan required by the FDA for all mycophenolate-formulations, including CellCept, Myfortic and any generic formulations.

iSpecimen aims to create a clinical partner network of hospitals, laboratories, academic institutions, and other healthcare organizations ("institutions") capable of providing researchers and educators ("researchers") with annotated biospecimens for use in biomarker discovery and validation; diagnostic test and instrumentation development and validation; therapeutics development; other medical research including the impact that various specimen collection and handling methods and conditions have on research results; and in education such as researcher or physician training (collectively "research").

The study explore the relationship between COVID-19 and the induction of autoimmune diseases.