ABSTRACT: 

EEG biomarkers to improve the discovery of new neurotherapeutics 

 

The purpose of this poster is to describe how EEG biomarkers can help to identify new neurotherapeutics in epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease. The development of new neurotherapeutics is nowadays facing a great challenge. In fact, a lot of clinical trials have over the last decades failed in critical brain disorders with unmet medical need, such as Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy or Parkinson’s disease, mainly by lack of efficacy. SynapCell has identified translational EEG biomarkers used here as signatures of brain disorders in rodent models. They were used to develop drug discovery programs and make the bridge between preclinical and clinical stages to identify and select the best neurotherapeutics. Based on the detection of epileptic discharges by EEG, we have developed a program aiming at identifying the effect of new neurotherapeutics in two types of epilepsies: the absence epilepsy and the mesio-temporal lobe epilepsy. Using these two non-convulsive models, we have developed a drug discovery program from the screening of small library of compounds to the selection and validation of lead compounds. Working with animal models of chronic epilepsy, they allow identification of drugs acting on disease-modification or epileptogenesis. In the field of Parkinson’s disease, based on BetaPark and GammaPark oscillations as EEG biomarkers, we have developed drug discovery programs allowing the evaluation of new neurotherapeutics on motor symptoms and L-DOPA induced dyskinesia using the 6-OHDA lesioned rat model. In this poster, we will present how our drug discovery programs in these two major brain disorders can help researchers to make decisions and to discover new innovative treatments.