Exploring drug repurposing approaches for Parkinson’s disease

Julia Romanowska, Trond Riise

2024-02-19

Photo by Roberto Sorin on Unsplash

DRONE

DRONE and TRACE

DRONE and TRACE

Epidemiology:
registry-based research

• we’re checking the Prescription Registry

Bioinformatics:
molecular databases, enrichment in GWAS

Medical statistics:
new methods, time-dependent exposure, emulated target trials

• new methods: agnostic search for associations

Experimental systems:
collaboration with Harvard and Yale

• collaboration with Boston

DRONE - who we are?

Locally

• NeuroSysMed
  

Internationally:

• Marianna Cortese, Harvard
• Kjetil Bjørnevik, Harvard
• Clemens Scherzer, Yale

DRONE - what we do?

DRONE = drug repurposing for neurological diseases;

drug repurposing = we have entire Prescription registry to look into; more than 600 million prescriptions, ca.4.5 million Norwegians, 2004–2019

MAIN AIM: find drugs that influence risk of disease

influence = reduce or increase;

drugs that increase risk can give information about disease genesis;

drugs that decrease risk can be potentially used as new treatment options

DRONE - Research projects

Parkinson’s disease (PD) - Julia Tuominen,
Asieh Mofrad (until April), Muhammad Eid (graduated)

Multiple sclerosis (MS) - Akash Kapali

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) - Magne Solheim

DRONE - Communication

• 19 presentations on conferences and seminars
• 5 gatherings
• 3 media articles
• 1 Master thesis defended
• thousands of lines of code

list of papers + posters + presentations; photos of Julia T and Akash presenting

New project

Finland: Anna-Maija Tolppanen
School of Pharmacy, Faculty of Health Sciences, Univ.of Eastern Finland

France: Alexis Elbaz
French Institute of Health and Medical Research, Inserm

they both have

New project - Idea

Cross-validation of findings from: Norway, France, and Finland

1. Cross-validate methodology (Finland)

2. Meta-analysis (Norway)

3. Cross-validate significant findings (all)