Active clinical trials for "Neurodegenerative Diseases"

The English version of the "Clinical Assessment of Dysphagia in Neurodegeneration" (CADN), represents a rapid and valid clinical assessment tool for dysphagia in neurodegenerative population. Currently, there is no validated tool in Italian specific for the clinical assessment of dysphagia in neurodegenerative disease with strong psychometric characteristics. The present study aims to translate and validate the Italian version of CADN in neurodegenerative population. Psychometric properties will be measured.

There is an urgent need for the development of digital progression biomakers, which are sensitive to detect small, but potentially clinically relevant changes in the disease course. Digital biomarkers are based on (i) continuously collected real-time data, during the patient's day to day activities; and (ii) task-based assessment. In this study the investigators are interested in developing algorithms for the detection of disease progression in PSP patients in key clinical parameters: bradykinesia, gait, rising from a chair and falls, based on (i) sensor data obtained by means of passive monitoring during daily living; and (ii) sensor data collected during the Virtual Motor Exam.

Explore the effects of natural plant flavonoids on the positive intervention mechanism of neurotransmitter transmission physiological indicators changes (EEG) in the brain of the study subjects; Investigate the effects of natural plant flavonoids in positively intervening clinical symptoms of the study subjects.

It is not known what causes Parkinson's disease and what makes it worsen over time. Research conducted in the past few years has highlighted the possible role of inflammation on this process but its actual mechanisms are still obscure. In this study, the investigators aim to gain understanding on how inflammation is increased in Parkinson's disease and what are its mechanisms, by performing two Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scans using the tracer [11C]PBR28, that takes pictures of the brain highlighting the areas of inflammation, before and after the administration of a compound called Lipopolysaccharide or LPS, that is known to cause a mild degree of inflammation. The investigators will couple this study with two venous blood draws to measure the levels of circulating molecules of inflammation.

Cognitive impairment often appears in neurodegenerative diseases, and it is expected to further study the mechanism of sleep disorders associated with the progression of neurodegenerative diseases by exploring the clinical manifestations, imaging, and biological marker changes of sleep disorders in neurodegenerative diseases.

The overall objective of this study is to identify the best approach for assessing the recovery function of sleep in neurodegenerative diseases associated with abnormal protein aggregation with regard to the conception of future intervention studies. To this end, the investigators will follow an exploratory approach in a preferably broad data set collected in patients with neurodegenerative diseases associated with abnormal protein aggregation and in healthy humans.

Neurological and neurodegenerative diseases have a major impact in families and in the national health service due to the lack in many cases of effective and long-lasting therapies. The lack of these therapeutic strategies is due in large part to the difficulty of modeling these pathologies in vitro. In fact, the impossibility of being able to cultivate human neurons in vitro has forced the use of animal cell models that do not adequately recapitulate the complexity of these human pathologies. For this reason it is necessary to proceed with the development of in vitro models of human origin that reproduce the molecular and biochemical characteristics of these diseases. The discovery of cellular reprogramming allowed the generation of pluripotent stem cells from the conversion of somatic cells taken from adult individuals. The proposing group already has great experience in generating iPS cells by reprogramming and in differentiating them into neurons and glias useful for neurological disease cellular studies. As an example, Dr. Broccoli's group has generated iPS cells from patients with Parkinson's disease and mutations in the OPA1 gene. The study of neurons differentiated by these iPS cells allowed to identify mitochondrial defects at the base of neuronal dysfunctions and to identify for the first time how the degeneration of dopaminergic neurons also depends on a moving mode of cell death called necroptosis. The investigators therefore propose to establish lines of iPS cells from patients with genetic mutations responsible for neurological and neurodegenerative diseases to generate neuronal and glial models in vitro for the study of pathological mechanisms and the validation of new future experimental therapies.

This is a phase 0 study that will enable an assessment of biodistribution and estimation of absorbed dose in humans based on data collected from five healthy volunteers, which is typically the minimum number required by the FDA for first-in-human studies to assess dosimetry of a new tracer. The evaluation of the brain imaging of thirty additional subjects in the 2nd part of the study will lead to a descriptive assessment of the targeting and pharmacokinetics of MPC6827 in the brain and between normal and diseased brain.

The Inserm NeuroPresage team has been using MRI for more than 20 years in the study of normal ageing and memory pathologies to further the understanding and the characterization of early diagnosis and the cerebral substrates of cognitive deficits in patients, particularly in the context of neurodegenerative diseases. Two years ago, a new 3T MRI camera was installed at the Cyceron centre. It is more efficient and should make it possible to obtain better quality images and/or to reduce the time required to acquire these images. In this context, it seems important to test the different sequences that we classically use in our studies, or that we plan to implement in our next studies (learning and text retrieval fMRI task), in order to optimize them, with a view to integrating them in our future studies.

This is a multi-center study that has three cohorts: 1) cognitive normal cohort (CN), 2) Alzheimer's disease cohort (AD) and 3) vascular cognitive impairment cohort (VCI). The goal of this study is to understand the risk factors of AD and VCI and to identify high risk patients for early intervention. It will collect demographic information, family history, medical history, neuropsychological tests, imaging studies and biological samples through standard and uniform procedures.