This is a prospective, observational multicenter study to collect blood from patients with mucopolysaccharidosis type IH (MPS-IH) undergoing laronidase therapy and a stem cell transplant.

Paul Orchard - orcha001@umn.edu

We are studying a new medication, namilumab, given to treat Chronic Pulmonary Sarcoidosis. We are looking at the effectiveness, how well the drug is tolerated, and the side effects that occur. For the first part of the study, some people will receive the namilumab; the others will receive an inactive (placebo) drug. In the second part of the study, everyone may receive the namilumab.

UMN Sarcoidosis Research Group Study - umnsarc@umn.edu

This is a single center, open label, Phase I clinical trial of bioactive curcumin with high phenolic extra virgin olive oil (HP-EVOO) to treat cutaneous neurofibromas (cNF) in Neurofibromatosis, type 1 (NF1) patients (aged 18 years or older).

Pavlina Sverak - svera004@umn.edu

This is a study to assess the safety and efficacy of PR001A, an Aden-associated (AAV9) viral vector to treat neuronopathic Gaucher disease type 2 (GD2) in infants. PRA001A will be administered via suboccipital injection to the cisterna magna during a single neurosurgical session. GD2 is a fatal disease of early infancy that does not have any therapeutic options beyond palliative care. This study will enroll infants 0-24 months of age.

Brenda Diethelm-Okita - dieth001@umn.edu

The DELIVER-MS study seeks to answer the important question: Does early treatment with highly effective DMT improve the prognosis for people with MS? This is an area of significant controversy and no data currently exist to guide treatment choices for patients and clinicians. The study results will help guide overall treatment philosophy and will be applicable not only to a wide range of existing therapies but also to new therapies, meeting a significant unmet need in patient decision making and aiding the decision for medication approval by third parties.

Beth Zander - zande001@umn.edu

The proposed study uses a recombinant AAV2/6 vector encoding the cDNA for human α-Gal A (ST-920). The α-Gal A produced by this cDNA has an identical amino acid sequence to the native enzyme, and also to Fabrazyme® (agalsidase beta or equivalent), a clinically approved recombinant protein product. The ST-920 construct encodes a liver-specific promoter, the human α-1-antitrypsin (hAAT) promoter and includes liver-specific regulatory elements. In addition, rAAV2/6 exhibits liver tropism thus providing the potential for long-term hepatic production of α-Gal A in Fabry disease subjects. Studies of ST-920 in a Fabry disease mouse model administered rAAV2/6 encoding hGLA cDNA by intravenous (IV) injection show generation of therapeutic circulating levels of α-Gal A. The one-time treatment with ST-920 minimizes the risk of infusion--related reactions. The goal of ST-920 is to provide stable, long-term production of α-Gal A at therapeutic levels in subjects with Fabry disease. The constant production of α-Gal A in humans should, importantly, enable reduction and potentially clearance of Fabry disease substrates Gb3 and lyso-Gb3.

Brenda Diethelm-Okita - dieth001@umn.edu

A single visit study with muscle and/or skin biopsy / blood draw, performed to determine whether a molecular or cellular defect can be attributed to cells of FSHD muscle. This study is recruiting both individuals with genetically confirmed FSHD as well as unaffected healthy (control) individuals.

Ana Mitanoska - mitan001@umn.edu

Currently, there are no approved treatment options for pediatric subjects with proteinuric kidney conditions. The study will look at the safety, efficacy, and pharmacokinetic (PK)trial in children ≥1 to <18 years treated for up to 108 weeks with the drug sparsentan.

Amy Hanson - amhanson@umn.edu

This is a prospective, longitudinal cohort study involving data collection regarding performance of children with ALD and typically developing (TD)children on neurocognitive testing and collection of neuroimaging data. The first goal of this study is to understand more about how ALD affects a child’s brain and development in childhood as they take part in their normal medical care and monitoring. This is important to identifying the best ways to detect and treat manifestations of ALD such as cerebral ALD. The second goal is to learn about how ALD affects caregivers, so that clinicians can offer better support to families in the future.

Brain Study - brainstudy@umn.edu

This project is a data and specimen repository for developmental disorders. Participants provide biological samples and permission to store their health-related data. The purpose is collect and manage these materials for use in biomedical research related to developmental disorders.

Williams Dobyns - wbdobyns@umn.edu

This is a treatment guideline for allogeneic hemapoetic stem cell transplant (HSCT) in patients with primary immune deficiencies. Endpoints include time to engraftment, incidence of graft failure, incidence of chimerism at 100 days, 6 months, and 1 year; incidence of acute GVHD at 100 days and chronic GVHD at 6 months and 1 year; incidence of transplant related mortality at 6 months and incidence of disease free survival and overall survival at 6 months. All endpoints will be abstracted from routine data collected by the BMT Database.

Christen Ebens - ebens012@umn.edu

This study is looking at glucose (blood sugar) patterns in participants with Turner Syndrome between the ages of 3-80 years old. This will be done by obtaining 2 hours frequent blood sampling by completing an Oral Glucose Tolerance Test and a Mixed Meal Tolerance Test. Participants will also wear a continuous glucose monitor for 2 weeks. Along with the OGTT and MMTT, participants are asked to provide a blood sample for DNA and RNA testing. Participant’s parents are asked to provide a saliva sample for DNA testing

Kyriakie Sarafoglou - saraf010@umn.edu

Limb Girdle Muscular Dystrophy comprise a group of disorders made up of over 30 mutations which share a common phenotype of progressive weakness of the shoulder and hip girdle muscles. While the individual genetic mutations are rare, as a cohort, LGMDs are one of the four most common muscular dystrophies. The overall goal of project 1 is to define the key phenotypes as measured by standard clinical outcome assessments (COAs) for limb girdle muscular dystrophies (LGMD) to hasten therapeutic development.

Allison Johnston - joh21779@umn.edu

In this protocol, we will enroll pediatric, adolescent and adult patients diagnosed with adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD). These patients will include probands diagnosed by newborn screening and their relatives subsequently diagnosed, as well other patients who are diagnosed with ALD due to other presenting signs and symptoms and subsequently were confirmed to have ALD. We will ask consenting subjects to provide a medical history (with verification via medical records), to participate in a semi-annual health survey and provide consent to collect biospecimens. The overarching goal of this work is to engage with families affected by ALD and to assemble a resource of clinical, medical, and biological data that will allow of to better understand the natural history of ALD, and how this is affected by newborn screening. The initial focus will be on patients within Minnesota, but participation will be open to any family interested in the study, as this will be web-based. This registry and biobank, together with other research conducted in tandem, will possibly provide information describing the natural history of ALD and outcomes with interventions. It is anticipated that the data collected will further our understanding of the natural history of the disease, basic biology of adrenoleukodystrophy, diagnosis and outcomes. Ultimately, this research may lead to new avenues for early diagnosis and development of safer and more effective therapies for ALD.

Rachael Eye - eye00002@umn.edu

The purpose of the study is to test new biomarkers of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and primary lateral sclerosis (PLS) using MRI scans at 3 tesla (3T). Identifying biomarkers of a disease can lead to a better understanding of the disease as well as improved treatments.

Valerie Ferment - ferm0016@umn.edu

We are doing the RARE study to learn more about Cystic Fibrosis (CF). CF is caused by mutations in a gene that produces a protein called the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR). In people with CF, the CFTR does not function correctly. Medications are being developed to help the CFTR function better, but those medications mostly benefit people with common CFTR mutations. There are more than 1,900 mutations of the CF gene. Some of these mutations are rare and found only in a few people. The goal of this research study is to collect specimens (blood, nasal cells, rectal cells) from people with rare CFTR mutations. Another purpose of this study is to create induced pluripotent stem cells or iPS cells. “Pluripotent” stem cells are cells that can be changed into almost any cell type of the body (such as lung or intestine). They can be kept alive and stored indefinitely. There are different kinds of pluripotent stem cells. Inducted pluripotent stem cells can be created from many different kinds of specimens (such as blood, nasal cells, rectal cells). This is different from embryonic stem cells, which can only be derived from embryos. The specimens collected during this study and iPS cells created from them will be stored for use in future research to learn more about CF and study the effect of new medications. This could identify new medications that may help people with rare CFTR mutations.

Dena Johnson - joh20459@umn.edu

A single-center, single-arm, non-interventional natural history study to evaluate the longitudinal clinical course, functional outcome measures, and candidate biomarkers for individuals with DNA repair disorders, including Cockayne syndrome (CS), xeroderma pigmentosum (XP), and trichothiodystrophy (TTD).

Erin Aguero - aguer008@umn.edu

The purpose of this study is to measure levels of blood and brain chemicals related to oxidative stress and inflammation in healthy volunteers and individuals with Type 1 Gaucher disease (GD1) to see if these levels are altered by GD1. We will also examine if there is a change in these blood and brain chemicals after participants begin taking oral N-acetylcysteine (NAC), which is available both as a prescription medication and a natural product that has antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects.

Reena Kartha - rvkartha@umn.edu

This is a long-term registry is designed to collect data on hypophosphatasia (HPP) to better understand the condition and learn more about the disease, how patients feel about living with HPP and effect of HPP on the patients wellbeing and health. The study will look at participant’s medical records and health questionnaires about the health status of patients. This study collects observational data from clinical care and does not involve any treatment for HPP or administration of medication for HPP.

Kyriakie Sarafoglou - saraf010@umn.edu

The effect of enzyme replacement therapy on how well your kidneys are responding to enzyme replacement therapy (ERT) is not clear from blood and urine tests alone, but may be more clear in comparisons of kidney biopsies performed before and some time after ERT has been initiated, and this is what we are focusing our study efforts on. The purpose of this study is to obtain your permission to allow us to study the kidney biopsy tissues (collected for medical reasons) after the regular routine studies have been completed. Through our special research measurements and additional study, we hope to be able to see and measure very specific changes in the kidney tissues from Fabry patients taking ERT. We also hope that through these studies of what happens within the kidney before and after starting ERT, we are able to reveal valuable information about the importance of factors like your age that you started ERT, the amount or dosage of ERT, and any differences seen between males and females.

Michael Mauer - mauer002@umn.edu

This is a multi-center, prospective, observational cohort registry study looking at kids and their relatives with Catecholaminergic Polymorphic Ventricular Tachycardia (CPVT).

Brittany Faanes - grego318@umn.edu

The Syner-G regimen research study seeks to evaluate the use of a combination of a medication called miglustat and a ketogenic diet for treatment of the gangliosidoses to learn if this combination will provide improved clinical outcomes compared to what we currently know about the natural course of the disease.

Jeanine Jarnes - utzx0002@umn.edu

This study's primary aims are to define and characterize disease progression for the infantile and juvenile forms of the gangliosidoses, and the late-onset forms of gangliosidosis, including their heterogeneity; and to observe treatment outcomes for any treatments tried. The secondary aims of this study are to understand the neurological involvement in late-onset gangliosidosis; and to collect data on disease progression that can be used for creation of an objective disease stage and severity index.

Jeanine Jarnes - utzx0002@umn.edu