Collection of Biological Samples from Patients with Rare Neurological Diseases

Recruiting

• Conditions: Nervous System Diseases
• Interventions: Biological: Blood collection on admission and longitudinally

• Registration Number: NCT04698421
• Lead Sponsor: University Hospital, Toulouse

Brief Summary

The aim of this project is to improve biological collections of patients presenting rare neurological disorders with known or suspected autoimmune origin. This collection will provide appropriate biological samples to identify new biomarkers and to be accessible to the medical, scientific and industrial communities for the identification of new therapeutic strategies.

Detailed Description

Neuroimmunology is a rapidly expanding field since major advances have been made in basic immunology and numerous new clinical entities have been identified in the last 10 years. Even if these discoveries have led to major advances in patient's management and treatment, a lot of work needs to be done to improve the diagnosis and prognostic biomarkers. It is widely known that the immune system is implicated in a variety of neurological disorders such as infections, encephalitis or multiple sclerosis. Numerous neurological disorders affecting the central and peripheral nervous system can be attributed to the immune system and need to be recognized as some of them can be cured by appropriate immunotherapy. These neurological disorders include autoimmune encephalitis and paraneoplastic neurological syndromes but also myasthenia, chronic demyelinating inflammatory polyneuropathy and other neuromuscular pathologies.

These neurological disorders are characterized by the presence of autoantibodies in the patient's sera or cerebral spinal fluid (CSF). These autoantibodies are generally highly specific and necessary to make the diagnosis. However, in some cases, despite strong clinical arguments for a neuroimmunological disorder, we do not identify autoantibodies, leading to inappropriate treatment and a blind follow-up considering the risk of recurrence or of associated tumor. Furthermore, even if the specific role of some autoantibodies or of immune T cells in some of these pathologies are suspected or already documented, for most of them the exact mechanism is still unknown. We need to explore the sera and CSF of these patients to identify new diagnosis and prognosis biomarker. Moreover, the availability of immune cells isolated from these patients will help us to decipher the pathophysiological mechanisms to create new therapeutic strategies. For this, animal models are already available in Centre Physiopathology Toulouse and in the French reference center in Lyon. As genetic susceptibilities may underlie, at least in part, the variability of the clinical manifestations and of the response to treatment, DNA from patients will be collected and immune genes sequencing will be compared to other control groups, included international database.

Study Timeline

• Study Start: 2020-10-12
• Study First Submitted: 2020-12-23
• Study First Submitted QC: 2021-01-05
• Study First Posted: 2021-01-06
• Status Verified: 2024-12
• Last Update Submitted: 2024-12-05
• Last Update Posted: 2024-12-11
• Primary Completion: 2030-01-01
• Study Completion: 2030-09-03

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: RECRUITING
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 1000

Inclusion Criteria

• all patients with neurological disorders, with known or probable autoimmune involvement. This includes adults and children and peripheral and/or central nervous system symptoms.
• Social coverage up to date.

Exclusion Criteria

• Patients with neurological damage from which the autoimmune character can be excluded.
• Known anemia and hemoglobin <10 g / dl
• Patients under protective supervision (guardianship, curators)
• Pregnant or breastfeeding woman

Study & Design

• Study Type: OBSERVATIONAL
• Study Design: Not specified

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
patients with rare autoimmune neurological diseases	Blood collection on admission and longitudinally	-

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Building a collection of biological samples and clinical-biological data from patients with rare autoimmune neurological diseases	Day 0 and through study completion, an average of 1 year	Blood sampling

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Identification of biomarkers regarding the severity (such as cytokines, axonal damages...) in order to help the therapeutic decisions.	Day 0 and through study completion, an average of 1 year	Analysis of the phenotypic profiling of blood immune cells by multicolor fluorescence-activated cell sorter (FACS) analysis and of the transcriptomic profiling of blood immune cells by RNA sequencing
Identification of new autoantibodies.	Day 0 and through study completion, an average of 1 year	ELISA
Exploration of the pathophysiological mechanisms of rare autoimmune neurological pathologies.	Day 0 and through study completion, an average of 1 year	Knock-out or knock-in animal models for one specific protein will be used to determine in vivo if the pathophysiological mechanisms of rare autoimmune neurological disorder can be induced by the abnormal expression of this protein.

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

Purpan University Hospital; 🇫🇷 Toulouse, France