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H2020Doctoral network2020–2025

PARENT · PremAtuRe nEwborn motor and cogNitive impairmenTs: Early diagnosis

Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Duration
2020-11-01 → 2025-04-30
EU contribution
€3,835,853
Participants
11
Scheme
MSCA-ITN

Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.

Results in brief

PremAtuRe nEwborn motor and cogNitive impairmenTs: Early diagnosis

Preterm birth is the main cause of neurodevelopmental disabilities (NDD). Reliable neuroimaging and other clinical and biochemical markers for detecting high-risk infants would be critical to take advantage of infant neuroplasticity and improve motor and cognitive outcomes through timely and effective therapies. However, current diagnosis of neurological dysfunction in premature infants still relies primarily on clinical monitoring and late detection of impairments, which limits early intervention. PARENT addressed this gap through a multidisciplinary and inter-sectoral approach, aiming to revolutionize early diagnosis of motor and cognitive impairments in preterm infants. The project trained 15 Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) across academic, clinical, and industrial sectors within a European Training Network, building a new generation of experts capable of combining neuroscience, AI, signal processing, and bioinformatics. The project was structured around five Specific Objectives (SOs): • SO1: Neonatal brain-specific hybrid neuroimaging technology • SO2: Personalized eye tracking in newborns at neurological risk • SO3: Congenital heart disease and neurodevelopmental disease relationships • SO4: Computational modelling to predict ncRNA–NDD association • SO5: Multidimensional landscape characterizing neurodevelopmental diseases The overarching goal was to design a predictive, explainable and integrative clinical framework able to support physicians in the early identification and personalized follow-up of at-risk infants.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

Prematurity exponentially increases the risk for an altered neurodevelopmental outcomes in childhood and adolescence. Many survivors children, face a lifetime of disability. Despite the advances in neonatal care have greatly improved survival of preterm born infants even at extremely low gestational ages we are now at a period of steadiness where no further improvement in long-term neurodevelopmental outcome is seen. The impact of these sequelae affects not only at a personal and familiar level but also poses a significant burden on society. Early diagnostics of brain injury and/or brain dysmaturation as well as early detection of impairments are important strategies to improve the well-being of children and their families allowing for developmental monitoring and medical evaluation of the specific type of disorder that affects a child and optimize therapeutics options. In this context, PARENT is a vision for a multidisciplinary approach to develop diagnostic and predictive platforms focused on newborn motor/cognitive impairments. PARENT will make a critical contribution towards an open neurodevelopmental disease diagnostic software infrastructure by interlinking disciplines from clinical data, neuroimaging collection and processing, biomarkers, data fusion, machine learning applied to clinical data, novel prediction algorithms.To best leverage the data potential, PARENT envisions an easy-to-use software infrastructure which provides integrated databases, validated algorithms components and platforms built upon them. This vision can be included in the more general paradigm of evidence-based medicine, personalized medicine and patient center care, as well as decision support systems in clinical field. PARENT combines the efforts of a multidisciplinary network of 10 leading European research groups, industry partners, pediatric hospitals and parents’ association to develop a technological infrastructure that will train 15 Early Stage Researchers.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

  • POLITECNICO DI TORINO · TorinoCoordinatorItaly
  • 7HC SOCIETA A RESPONSABILITA LIMITATA · ROMAItaly
  • Fundación para la Gestión de la Investigación Biomédica de Cádiz · CadizSpain
  • GPI SPA · TrentoItaly
  • ICOMETRIX NV · LeuvenBelgium
  • KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVEN · LeuvenBelgium
  • NEUS DIAGNOSTICS, RAZISKAVE IN RAZVOJ MEDICINSKE OPREME, D.O.O. · LjubljanaSlovenia
  • OSPEDALE PEDIATRICO BAMBINO GESU · ROMAItaly
  • TOELT GMBH · DubendorfSwitzerland
  • UNIVERSIDAD DE CADIZ · CadizSpain
  • UNIVERZA V LJUBLJANI · LjubljanaSlovenia

Links

Data: CORDIS, © European Union