About FutureNeuro
Our Vision
Enable people with Neurological Diseases to live independently
Our Mission
Faster Diagnosis, Personalised Treatments and Patient-Centred Care
About Us
We aim to change the patient journey through research informed by the needs of both patients and neurologists. This includes developing rapid and accurate tools for diagnosis, the development of therapies to modify brain networks, technologies to enable patients to monitor their own health and well-being, and linking this to Ireland’s national imaging, diagnostics and eHealth infrastructure.
We are multi-disciplinary, inter-institutional and working with industry, patient organisations and the health service to transform the lives of patients in Ireland and worldwide.
We focus on epilepsy, a chronic brain disease-affecting people of all ages, and ALS (also known as motor neurone disease), a rare neurodegenerative disease, which can be viewed as a model of more common neurodegenerations in terms of shared pathomechanisms, clinical pathways and patient journey. This unique approach has proven a powerful strategy for discovery that, along with our underpinning technology platforms and national clinical network, allows us to scale to other neurological disorders. That process has begun, with research underway on Parkinson’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis and other rare neurological diseases.
Our Themes
FutureNeuro conducts research in three thematic areas:
Diagnostics: Provision of an accurate molecular diagnosis through the discovery of genetic and circulating biomarkers of disease and developing technology for their detection.
Therapeutics: Discovery of novel and disease-modifying treatments that target hyperexcitable and damaged brain networks, optimizing treatment and clinical trials.
eHealth: Delivery of proactive, personalised and precision patient management and the development of research-enabled healthcare systems and connected health solutions to improve care, enrich research and facilitate clinical trials.
Diagnostics
Our Diagnostics research looks at applying sequencing and advanced informatics and nanomaterials technology to discover, detect and interpret biomolecules from patients collected via national clinical networks to deliver faster, more accurate diagnosis.
Therapeutics
Our Therapeutics research is exploring new types of therapies, including molecules that work by controlling the activity of networks of genes to stabilize or recover brain function to see how we could deliver these to the brain.
eHealth
Our eHealth research aims to deliver a research-adapted continuously learning and innovative healthcare system through careful design, development and implementation of eHealth technologies.
Our People
We bring together the brightest research talent in neuroscience, clinical neurology, genetics, cell biology, materials chemistry and patient data analytics, led by our team of cross-intitutional principal investigators.
David Henshall
Gianpiero Cavalleri
Jochen Prehn
Orla Hardiman
Matthew Campbell
Colin Doherty
Robert Forster
Sanbing Shen
Clinical Network
FutureNeuro clinical neurologists, spanning the main adult and paediatric hospitals across Ireland, represent the advanced clinical care of patients with neurological diseases. Located in the national tertiary neurology treatment centres and key regional hospitals, they bring expertise in clinical neurology, epilepsy, ALS, Alzheimer’s disease, MS, psychosis. Through our clinical network, our platform and industry research is enabled with:
Patient registers providing well-defined and stratified patient cohorts
- National Epilepsy Electronic Patient Record (EPR) developed since 2009. Rich source of longitudinal epilepsy care data > 10,000 patients (Phenotype, AED history, comorbidities, seizure history).
- Irish ALS register >1,400 patients enrolled since 1993
- MS register (emerging)
- Rare neurological disease register (emerging)
Deep patient phenotyping and genotyping correlations
Clinical trials expertise
- Patient recruitment
- Clinical Research Centre support
Remote seizure-monitoring and in-patient video monitoring unit
Integration with International research network
Biosamples collection (blood, tissue, CSF) for genetic diagnosis, precision therapeutics and gene discovery.
First seizure clinics
Our Institutes
What do we do?
Epilepsy Research
Our epilepsy research focuses on the causes, diagnosis and treatment of epilepsy. In particular, understanding genetic contributions to epilepsy and drug response, on the identification of molecular, imaging and electrophysiological biomarkers of epilepsy, and driving next-generation therapeutics development that use advanced molecular designs to adjust brain function to reduce hyperexcitability and stop seizures.
Multiple Sclerosis Research
Our research is a combination of preclinical and clinical discovery. We focus on understanding the impact of the immune system in Multiple Sclerosis, with the aim to understand how manipulation of microRNAs and metabolic pathways in macrophages may be therapeutically harnessed for the treatment of MS. We also investigate the prevalence and nature of cognitive impairment, using state of the art neurophysiologic technologies with to a view to improving clinical trials and resulting therapies.
Rare Paediatric Diseases
We have multiple projects focused on rare neurodevelopmental disorders. This includes Angelman, Dravet and Rett syndromes. Each are characterized by mutations in critical genes for brain development and function and share in common serious drug-resistant epilepsy as well as other life-limiting disabilities. Our preclinical and clinical research is exploring the underlying mechanisms of the diseases, identifying potential biomarkers and developing innovative new therapeutics including gene therapy approaches.
Motor Neurone Disease Research
Our ALS research explores genetic variants and stem cell modelling to inform disease diagnostics along with the integration of clinical phenotype to develop more precise stratification tools for clinical trials.
Parkinson's Research
Our Parkinson’s research harnesses our expertise in neuronal physiology, systems modelling, bioinformatics, neuronal physiology and mitochondrial bioenergetics to investigate the role of mitochondrial dysfunction in Parkinson’s disease
International Collaboration
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NGO Partners
FutureNeuro clinical neurologists, spanning the main adult and paediatric hospitals across Ireland, represent the advanced clinical care of patients with neurological diseases. Located in the national tertiary neurology treatment centres and key regional hospitals, they bring expertise in clinical neurology, epilepsy, ALS, Alzheimer’s disease, MS, psychosis. Through our clinical network, our platform and industry research is enabled with:
Our Governance
