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. 2020 Oct 9:371:m3658.
doi: 10.1136/bmj.m3658.

New era of personalised epilepsy management

Zhibin Chen  1   2   3 , Ben Rollo  2 , Ana Antonic-Baker  2 , Alison Anderson  2 , Yuanlin Ma  1 , Terence J O'Brien  2   4 , Zongyuan Ge  5   6   7 , Xuefeng Wang  1 , Patrick Kwan  8   2   3   4
Affiliations

New era of personalised epilepsy management

Zhibin Chen et al. BMJ. .

Abstract

The trial and error approach to epilepsy treatment has not changed for over a century but machine learning and patient derived stem cells promise a personalised and more effective strategy, argue Patrick Kwan and colleagues

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: We have read and understood BMJ policy on declaration of interests and have the following interests to declare: ZC is supported by an early career fellowship from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) of Australia (GNT1156444). PK is supported by a Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) from the NHMRC of Australia (MRF1136427). PK and BR are supported by a MRFF Stem Cell Therapies grant (APP1201781). His institution has received speaker or consultancy fees and/or research grants from Biscayne, Eisai, GW Pharmaceuticals, LivaNova, Novartis, UCB Pharma and Zynerba. TOB is supported by a programme grant from the NHMRC of Australia (APP1091593), and the Royal Melbourne Hospital Neuroscience Foundation. AAB, AA, YM, ZG, and XW report no conflicts of interest. Provenance and peer review: Commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1
Simplified conceptual view of how personalised treatment may be applied in epilepsy. Instead of the present trial and error approach (a) physicians could consult the decision supporting software for drug selection and identifying patients with high risk of drug resistance (b). Blood cells are obtained from patients to derive personalised disease models for drug screening to identify targeted and effective treatment (c)
Fig 2
Fig 2
“Epilepsy in a dish” models comprise human neurons derived from patient iPSCs. Here they grow as small clusters of neurones (red) and from which project long ranging axons (green). The nuclei of supporting astrocytes and senescent cells are shown in blue. These models will advance precision medicine and identification of new targeted drugs for epilepsy
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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