Developing brain activity biomarkers

Summary

A major bottleneck to speeding up clinical trials in MND is that the effectiveness of new treatments is typically assessed by measuring loss of physical function or survival, which takes a long time. Trials could be shorter and less costly if we had a biomarker that can show early in a trial whether a treatment is working.

Dr Gohil’s team will investigate whether brain scanning can provide a new way to measure the progression of MND. They will focus on measuring brain networks that control movement and seeing how they are affected in MND. Measuring these changes could provide a much earlier indication of whether a treatment is working, helping to speed up clinical trials.

The team will use a newly developed helmet that measures brain activity (optically pumped magnetometer magnetoencephalography; OPM-MEG). For the first time, this technology allows researchers to measure brain activity while people are moving naturally, overcoming a major limitation of traditional scanning methods, which require participants to remain still.

The researchers will study people with MND, healthy controls, and people who carry genetic changes linked to MND but have not yet developed symptoms of MND. Using artificial intelligence (AI), they will compare each person's brain activity with patterns seen in healthy people to identify MND-related changes. Research suggests that changes in brain networks may occur even before symptoms appear. Detecting these early changes could open up opportunities to develop treatments that prevent or delay the onset of MND.

Why this research is important

This work could lead to a new biomarker for measuring MND progression more quickly and accurately than current approaches. In the future, this could help clinical trials determine sooner whether potential treatments are working, accelerating the development of new therapies.