Alex De Nardi

Mathematical modeller in Trento who applies survival and epidemic models to medical data, and first author of the 2026 re-analysis of the RAP-ALS rapamycin trial in ALS

COSBI, Fondazione The Microsoft Research - University of Trento (2026)

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a disease in which the nerve cells that control muscles die. RAP-ALS was a small clinical trial of rapamycin, the drug that blocks the growth-control complex mTORC1, in people with ALS. In the Atlas study DEN2026B, De Nardi and colleagues went back to the trial data (63 patients) and asked which factors predicted survival. Among carriers of a mutation in the C9orf72 gene, the most common genetic cause of ALS, those treated with rapamycin survived longer, and the same pattern held against a separate group of 40 C9orf72 carriers.

This is a secondary, exploratory analysis. The number of treated C9orf72 carriers was small, and the patients were not randomised for this question, so the drug may not be the cause of the difference. The result is a reason for a proper trial in this genetic group, not evidence that rapamycin works in ALS.

PubMed lists De Nardi in 2026 at COSBI in Rovereto, a computational biology centre run jointly by Microsoft Research and the University of Trento.

Milestones in the Atlas

A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.

Co-authors in the Atlas 1

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