In an exciting development that could help scientists to learn more
about treating rare neurological diseases and more common problems
like Alzheimer’s, cerebral palsy, and others, physician-scientists at
Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and
Montefiore Medical Center have just been given an important grant.
This grant will allow them to create a clinical site for the Network
for Excellent in Neuroscience Clinical Trials (NeuroNEXT).

As one of only 25 federally-funded centers of this sort in the entire
country, the Einstein-Montefiore site has also partnered with Einstein
affiliates Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan and the North
Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System.

NeuroNEXT has the goal of facilitating Phase II clinical trails for
rare neurological diseases. In general, these trials face incredible
challenges both in gaining funding from the industry and in finding
participants. Many road blocks exist with Phase II trials which asses
how well a drug delivers effective results and with what frequency to
administer it. Once a drug that is promising is found, it is very
tricky to find enough participants with such rare disorders and it
requires doing so around the country.

The pre-existing network of sites with the NeuroNEXT network allows
researchers to bypass much of this red tape and these issues. As
Shlomo Shinnar, M.D., Ph.D. and co-principal investigator on the grant
said, “We’ll basically be a S.W.A.T. team. Researchers – and
interested physicians with no research experience – will be able to
tap into an existing infrastructure that can provide the research and
regulatory expertise to participate in these clinical trials.
Normally, when you build a multi-center study, it can take a year or
two to get the trial going. We hope to get this down to a few months.”

Mark Mehler, M.D., professor and chair of the Saul R. Korey Department
of Neurology at Einstein, chair of neurology at Montefiore, and the
Alpern Family Foundation Chair in Cerebral Palsy Research at Einstein
further explained how this grant is relevant for other neurological
issues. He said, “While this initiative offers us an opportunity to
dramatically change the lives of patients with these rare diseases,
the findings are also likely to provide insight into more common
neurological disorders, like migraines and stroke, which affect
millions of people.”