DRONE - Drug Repurposing fOr Neurological disEases
The project aims to develop new and effective treatments for the neurological diseases Parkinson's disease (PD), multiple sclerosis (MS), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and Alzheimer's disease (AD).

Main content
The researchers will analyze data from the Norwegian health registries, including the Prescription Register and Patient Register, using an innovative drug repurposing approach based on the history of prescriptions for the entire Norwegian population during last 16 years. The newly developed methodology will help identify drug candidates for new treatment for the diseases. These candidates will be then validated in experimental studies (both in vitro and in vivo) in collaboration with the excellent researchers at Harvard University in Boston, USA
Apart from securing its own funding via Michael J. Fox foundation and NRC (The Research Council of Norway), DRONE is also part of the initiative on the treatment of neurological disease, NeuroSysMed (Norway's first research center for clinical treatment in neurology) at Haukeland University Hospital / UiB.
News
- NEW article from PhD Candidate Julia Axiina Tuominen: Beta2-adrenoreceptor agonists and long-term risk of Parkinson's disease
- DRONE group had a one-day long seminar at Augustin Hotel 17th November 2022
- DRONE welcome Muhammad Eid, MSc Global Health student at The University of Bergen!
- Asieh Abolpour Mofrad will defend her dissertation on 15.11.2021 for the PhD degree at the University of Bergen with the dissertation "Clique-Based Neural Associative Memories".
- September 16th 2021 14:00-14:45: Trial lecture - PhD Asieh Abolpour Mofrad
- August 2021: Asieh Abolpour Mofrad has started in DRONE - welcome!
- April 2021: Hopefully a DRONE seminar will be arranged at Solstrand 26-27 May!
- March 2021: We are looking forward to Asieh Abolpour Mofrad starting with us in August as a postdoctoral fellow!
- Sept. 2020: Welcome to two new PhD students, Julia Tuominen and Akash Kapali!
- Sept. 2020: We have received extra funding from ALS patients’ association (Alltid Litt Sterkere)! This will help us dedicate a full PhD-position to research on this disease.
Presentations
Muhammad gave two presentations about his master project at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) and at the FEST Seminar.
Trond was presenting DRONE at Datathon (https://www.eitrilab.no/datathon2022) and will be presenting at https://www.uib.no/ai/157424/uib-ai-4-examples-medical-ai
Akash was attending ECTRIMS (26-28 Oct., https://2022.ectrims-congress.eu/)
Muhammad and Jannicke were attending NOFE (http://nofe.no/nofe-conference-2022/)
- Julia T.: 2022 ANNUAL MEETING – THE GREAT NEURO REUNION Seattle this April 2-7 (S12 - NEUROEPIDEMIOLOGY 02:48 PM - 03:00 PM PDT Abstract 010 - Selective ß2-Adrenoreceptor Agonists and Long-Term Parkinson’s Disease Risk Julia Axiina Tuominen, MPsych)
- Julia T.: Poster: "Definition and Incidence of Parkinson’s Disease Based on Nationwide Prescription- and Diagnostic Data" at XXV World Congress of Neurology (3-7. October 2021)
- Trond: Abstract "A reverse translational research project for identifying new treatments for Parkinson’s disease: The Italian/Norwegian drug-screening project" at XVI Convegno Nazionale di Neuroepidemiologia 2021 (24. Sept 2021)
- Julia R.: R-Medicine Diving into Registry Data: Using R for Large Norwegian Health Registries (https://r-medicine.org/schedule/) (Thursday, August 26th 2021)
- Julia R.: Bioinformatics in Bergen (18-19. Aug. 2021)
- Julia R.: CEDAS Diving into registry data (https://cedasconf.w.uib.no/accepted-posters/) (1-2. June 2021)