Het Institute for Neuro-Immune Medicine van de Nova Southeastern University (Florida),

o.l.v. dr. Nancy Klimas, opende op 12 februari 2013 officieel haar deuren (klik hier).

Voor meer informatie over het instituut en de opening, klik op onderstaand logo:

Voor een kort promotiefilmpje van de NOVA universiteit, klik op onderstaande afbeelding:

Voor de doelen van en de expertise binnen het Institute for Neuro-Immune Medicine,

zie onderstaand artikel van Cort Johnson op de website van Simmaron (van dr. Peterson).

Great Start – Big Plans Ahead:

Dr. Klimas at her NSU Coming Out Party

Cort Johnson, February 20, 2013

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS)

Dr. Klimas's test results suggest

an insult is still present in ME/CFS.

(More on that later).

Calling it a terrible illness Dr. Klimas noted that

1/4 or more of people with ME/CFS are fully disabled and

many more are partially disabled and

that the disease with the funny name is

as debilitating as heart disease, end stage kidney disease, AIDS (AIDS !!!) and MS.

She laughed at one idea she come across at times;

that people with ME/CFS want to be

on disability and the poverty level income that provides them

instead of having access to their income they enjoyed previously;

yes, she laughed, what a great trade-off that would be.

The People

Thus far the Institute has on board researchers specializing in

gene expression (Nathanson),

viral effects (Waziry),

clinical research (Dr. Klimas) and

two computational biologists, (Broderick and Cradock) and,

I've been told, may be adding an animal modeler.

Pathogens

Waziry specializes in a key, key area –

detecting how viruses muck up how cells operate.

If viruses are present you, of course, want to get at them

but if the viruses are gone or are hard to find

then finding some sort of viral fingerprint

could inform you how the damage occurred,

where to target treatments and

what viruses to look for would be very helpful and

that's what Waziry is doing.

Given the common infectious trigger in this disorder

this slant makes sense;

something, after all, happened way back when and

for many people it involved a pathogen.

If Waziry finds a signature unique to cells

that Epstein Barr Virus mutilated, for instance,

you'd know your pathogen

without having to resort to expensive and not always accurate blood tests.

It's also possible, given the many infectious triggers documented in ME/CFS

(EBV, parvovirus, coxsackie, West Nile Virus, Giardia, etc.)

that they're all tweaking the system in the same way.

If that's what's happening

then finding a common immune signature

will allow the team to develop simple diagnostic tests

for a significant portion of ME/CFS patients.

Computational Biology

Dr. Klimas has fully embraced a new branch of biology

called computational biology

that uses sophisticated data mining techniques

to analyze how our internal systems operate.

In fact Dr. Klimas has so fully embraced this type of research

that her computational biologists are doing cutting edge work

not being done in any other disease.

The computational biologists

(Broderick and Crawford) play clean up.

Every piece of research and clinical data gathering

ultimately ends up in their hands.

They're trying to do something unique in medicine;

using data mining techniques

to target the molecular source of this disease in time.

Think of it as isolating the pebble that started the snow slide

that ended creating an avalanche.

This isn't about symptom amelioration anymore;

this is about getting at the very beginnings of the system-wide 'collapse'

that occurred and is still occurring in people with ME/CFS.

The computational biologist are the ones, Dr. Klimas explained,

that will ultimately be able to tell her that tweaking this patients HPA axis here,

and prodding their immune system over here and here,

should stop the cascade of system-wide dysfunction

that causes chronic fatigue syndrome...

Essentially she wants to cut a relapse or flare off at it's ...er...start.

...

Goals for this Year

Next Dr. Klimas went over their goals for this year.

We're going to be able

to collect huge mountains of data on normal care and

make the evidence happen...

Dr. Nancy Klimas

Turn the Clinical Database into A Research Database

(and then analyze the heck out of it)

The plan, is to integrate her clinical databases

into her REDCAP research database,

providing her sophisticated tools

to analyze treatment effectiveness

in her patients, past and present.

If you're part of her clinic (with your permission)

you'll become a research partner as well.

This is big stuff.

By putting her patients into a research database

made for, well, research and analysis –

Dr. Klimas is opening up

thousands of records and patient outcomes to analysis.

Over time this will bring treatment outcomes

out of the fog of individual guesswork and intuition

into the clarity of statistically derived analysis.

No more waiting for someone spend

two years convincing the NIH to fund a small treatment trial...

those trials have effectively been underway

in ME/CFS specialists offices for decades;

they're just waiting to be uncovered.

Doxepin elixir is commonly used

to aid sleep in chronic fatigue syndrome

but how effective is it really?

Are there certainly types of patients it works better in?

Would some patients do better with Ambien?

Nobody really knows the answers to these questions

but given the staff and funding

they are answerable with this technology.

If this really works, this work,

and Dr. Kogelnik at the Open Medicine Institute has similar plans,

would be a bonanza for both patients and doctors.

Since the CDC doesn't seem to be able

to handle non evidence-based data,

we could anticipate an entirely new CDC Toolkit, for example,

coming out of this work.

Dr. Klimas said they were going to try and sell the project to Medicare.

The ability to do this kind of work

is one of the dreams of the electronic digital revolution

spreading across the medical field.

Only time will tell

but hopefully it will deliver on its promise.

How did Dr. Klimas get this project up and running?

She walked into an NSU office...

and asked them "Do you think we could????"

and it was borne.

That's the difference between working in a pro-active environment

that is eager for you to succeed and in an institution (my words, not hers)

that tolerates your existence

but isn't going to go out of its way to support you.

Other Goals

• Establish a Translational Research Program
• Begin the DOD modeling studies (see later presentation)
• Establish a Nanostring (Gene Expression) Laboratory
• Integrate DOD and NIH programs at the new lab
• Apply to NIH for Program Project Funds to Pull Everything Together
• Train Young Researchers

http://simmaronresearch.com/2013/02/last-years-wins-next-years-goals-dr-klimas-on-the-big-plan-at-the-institute-for-neuroimmune-research/