Personalized Medicine for Spinal Muscular Atrophy: a Translational Project to Achieve Patient Specific Therapeutic Guidance.

Hyphotesis and Significance:

The individual variability in clinical response to treatment reported in the first Nusinersen studies has been confirmed by post approval real-world data. While some children acquire unexpected motor abilities, others have an apparently more limited clinical response. Age at disease onset and severity are reported to play a role, but do not account for the entire spectrum of clinical responses observed. There is a strong need to identify clinical and laboratory biomarkers to better understand the variables that determine the response to treatment in individuals, especially under the prospect of having further therapeutic options approved in the near future.

Working hypothesis: The hypothesis is that circulating, including neurofilaments and myostatin pathway, and imaging biomarkers may provide additional information to clinical longitudinal data and that an integrated approach may provide a better possibility to develop a predictive model of therapeutic response to novel therapies for SMA patients.

The aim is to to set up a platform of biomarkers, including circulating NfL, myostatin pathway (GDF8, FOLLISTATIN, GDF11 and ACTIVIN A) and creatinine, to establish how they relate to clinical findings and to better understand if these variables may determine clinical response to the treatment in SMA.

In patients older than 5 years, muscle MRI at baseline will also be used to explore if the pattern and severity of muscle involvement can better define the phenotype and predict therapeutic response