Pondering New Treatments for Epilepsy with Dimitri Kullmann

Epilepsy affects approximately 70 million people worldwide. The performer Prince had childhood epilepsy, President Franklin Roosevelt had epilepsy which was hidden from the public, and the Olympian Florence Griffiths-Joyner died from an epileptic seizure. While drugs that inhibit sodium channels or activate GABA receptors control seizures for many patients, they are ineffective in one-third of patients. Professor Dimitri Kullmann’s laboratory at University College London is at the forefront of the development of designer gene therapies for epilepsy. Here Professor Kullmann discusses clinical aspects of epilepsy, animal models of epilepsy, and the new frontier of personalized molecular genetic therapies.

LINKS:

Epilepsy review article: file:///Users/markmattson/Downloads/nrdp201824.pdf

Review on designer receptor technology for the treatment of epilepsy: https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S2352-3964%2819%2930298-1

Nature Medicine article: autoregulatory gene therapy for focal epilepsy: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6152911/pdf/emss-77849.pdf

Science article: On-demand cell-autonomous gene therapy for epilepsy: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7613996/pdf/EMS158742.pdf

Intermittent fasting, mitochondria, and ketone therapy for epilepsy:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6478744/pdf/41467_2019_Article_9897.pdf

https://www.jneurosci.org/content/jneuro/40/3/694.full.pdf