Scientists from the National Institute for Neurological Research (NEUR-IN) took over the award on Monday 27. January 2025 a cheque in…
Scientists from the National Institute for Neurological Research (NEUR-IN) took over the award on Monday 27. January 2025 a cheque in the amount of CZK 581,000. The amount was raised thanks to a public collection by Brno native Iva Horčicová and the Karel Komárek Family Foundation. The funding will be used to fight neurodegenerative diseases, especially Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Specifically, for the purchase of medical technologies and the development of a mobile app that can diagnose brain diseases from speech.
Currently, neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, affect approximately 10% of the population over 65 years of age in the first world countries, including the Czech Republic. Estimates show that this could be as much as 15% in 10 years. The health and economic impact of this development on society will be enormous. Unfortunately, there is currently no effective cure for the disease. We constantly need to find new diagnostic methods to detect diseases as early and as gently as possible.
“My grandfather suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. My grandmother is currently battling Parkinson’s disease. Watching them fight is one of the hardest experiences of my life,” says Iva Horčicová, a tireless promoter of an active lifestyle. She decided to combine her passion for sport with charity – she entered the World Triathlon Championships and launched a public fundraiser to fight neurodegenerative diseases. It managed to raise almost CZK 280 000.
The Karel Komárek Foundation, which has long supported similar projects, was also impressed by her actions. The foundation contributed CZK 300 000 to research into neurodegenerative diseases. “Our goal is to give people the courage to turn their visions into reality. Iva Horčic is a tireless fighter on the track and in life. I am glad that we could support her initiative to help Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s patients,” said Luboš Veselý, director of the Karel Komárek Family Foundation (KKFF).
The KKFF contribution will go to the St. Anna’s Hospital in Brno to one of the most promising techniques that scientists from the National Institute for Neurological Research are working on.
“Temporal interference stimulation is a non-invasive method by which neurologists stimulate a specific site in a patient’s brain. There, neurons are activated, hopefully affecting the functioning of memory functions – that is, memory that is important for normal daily functioning, remembering things in the short term and retaining information. Memory, which is most often affected by progressive Alzheimer’s disease,” explains Milan Brázdil, Scientific Director of NEUR-IN and Head of the First Neurological Clinic of the University Hospital at St. Anne’s in Brno and the Faculty of Medicine of Masaryk University, adding: “This experimental method is helping patients to return to normal life again for a while. But the equipment is important not only for the therapy itself, but above all for research that will push the treatment methods further.”
To slow the global progression of Parkinson’s disease, NEUR-IN scientists are trying to detect it in its earliest stages. For example, by using a unique mobile app that can detect the onset of disease after just a few minutes of a call.
A team of scientists and physicians from NEUR-IN 1 is working on the software development. Medical Faculty of Charles University and the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Czech Technical University, where the second part of the funds from the public collection will go. The app has already been successfully tested on dozens of patients.
“Early diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease is crucial. Our research so far has shown that it is enough for a person to call for about 18 minutes to get a correct assessment, which corresponds to, for example, nine short calls with friends or family,” says Jan Rusz from the FEL CTU.
Typical of Parkinson’s is impaired speech melody, loudness and intelligibility. In the later stages of the disease, these difficulties are clearly audible. However, the changes may only be very subtle at first – even these can be reliably detected by the NEUR-IN application.
“We will use the donated funds to further develop the app. Especially in different types of mobile devices and also speech analysis in other languages. Thanks to Iva Horčic’s initiative, we can accelerate the software development by up to half a year,” adds Jan Rusz.
In the future, the NEUR-IN scientists also plan to focus on early diagnosis of multiple sclerosis and Huntington’s disease.
