Solving unsolved rare neurological diseases-a Solve-RD viewpoint

Matalonga, Leslie; Timmann, Dagmar; Erasmus, Corrie E.; Reichbauer, Jennifer; Wayand, Melanie; Solve-RD-DITF-RND; van de Warrenburg, Bart; Schöls, Ludger; Wilke, Carlo; Bevot, Andrea; Zuchner, Stephan; Beltran, Sergi; Laurie, Steven, 1973-; Graessner, Holm; Synofzik, Matthis; Solve-RD Consortium

doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41431-021-00901-1

Solving unsolved rare neurological diseases-a Solve-RD viewpoint

Citation

Schüle R, Timmann D, Erasmus CE, Reichbauer J, Wayand M, Solve-RD-DITF-RND et al.Solving unsolved rare neurological diseases-a Solve-RD viewpoint. Eur J Hum Genet. 2021;29:1332-6. DOI: 10.1038/s41431-021-00901-1

Abstract

Rare genetic neurological disorders (RND; ORPHA:71859) are a heterogeneous group of disorders comprising >1700 distinct genetic disease entities. However, genetic discoveries have not yet translated into dramatic increases of diagnostic yield and indeed rates of molecular genetic diagnoses have been stuck at about 30–50% across NGS modalities and RND phenotypes [1, 2]. Existence of yet unknown disease genes as well as shortcomings of commonly employed NGS technologies and analysis pipelines in detecting certain variant types are typically cited to explain the low diagnosis rates. To increase the diagnostic yield in RNDs - one of the four focus disease groups in Solve-RD - we follow two major approaches, that we will here present and exemplify: (i) systematic state-of the art re-analysis of large cohorts of unsolved whole-exome/genome sequencing (WES/WGS) RND datasets; and (ii) novel-omics approaches. Based on the way Solve-RD systematically organizes researchers’ expertise to channel this approach [3], the European Reference Network for Rare Neurological Diseases (ERN-RND) has established its own Data Interpretation Task Force (DITF) within SOLVE-RD, which is currently composed of clinical and genetic experts from 29 sites in 15 European countries.