One in four people in Ireland will be directly affected by a neurological disorder during their lifetime. FutureNeuro will develop new technologies and solutions for the treatments, diagnosis and monitoring of chronic and rare neurological diseases.

Established in 2017 and based in the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), FutureNeuro is a world leading Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) Research Centre.

We are a collaboration between academic partners (RCSI, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin City University, NUI Galway and University College Dublin.), Clinicians and Industry.

Neurological diseases pose enormous scientific and clinical challenges. For many brain diseases we either have therapy with limited efficacy or we simply have no effective treatment. There are complex factors underlying this – and progress has been made - but a starting point is our still incomplete understanding of the mechanistic basis of many brain diseases. Diagnosis is the cornerstone of clinical care as it is the primary tool for decisions on treatment, prognosis and patient management - but for many neurological diseases this remains largely reliant on clinical examination and history. The ability to rapidly and sensitively detect biomarkers of disease and disease-risk, ideally in a point-of-care setting, would transform clinical practice. At FutureNeuro, we aim to deliver these advances in understanding disease initiation and progress. With this understanding, we will develop new technologies and solutions for the treatments, diagnosis and monitoring of chronic and rare neurological diseases.

Why Now?

• Significant advances have been made in genomic medicine – the core research platform is based on discoveries made by our PIs. 
• The cost of genomic sequencing has reduced significantly, this enables clinical and scientific progress.
• Recent advances in development of molecular therapeutics and biomarkers have resulted in a more-directed therapeutic intervention to change the underlying pathology.
• Advances in eHealth will impact on the way patient health can be monitored and care is being delivered (e.g. Lighthouse project). At a national and global level the development of disease registers facilities the mining of genetic data and proper insights into suitable treatments.
• The size of the healthcare system in Ireland. There is a large enough population for results to be relevant and the small number of linked clinicians allow a national collaboration to identify disease-linking biomarkers.

Our research programme addresses three main themes: