Cavernous Angioma

CERVCO is the French National Reference Centre for Rare Cerebrovascular and Retinal Diseases, accredited by the Ministry of Health since 2005. Since 2017, CERVCO has coordinated the MRVC cohort, a prospective cohort of patients with rare vascular diseases of the brain and retina, and established the associated B-MRVC biobank in 2020 to support translational research and biomarker discovery. Due to the rarity and heterogeneity of these disorders, centralized longitudinal collection of clinical data and biological samples is essential to improve understanding of disease mechanisms, identify biomarkers of progression and prognosis, and facilitate the development of new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches. The present study aims to expand this longitudinal biobank, enable national and international collaborative research through controlled sample sharing, and establish reference control samples to support biomarker validation.

Cerebral cavernous malformation (CCM)-related epilepsy (CRE) impairs the quality of life in patients with CCM. Patients could not always achieve seizure freedom after surgical resection of the lesion, suggesting an inadequate treatment and evaluation of the epileptogenic zone or network. Iron deposition in cerebral cavernous malformations has been postulated to play an important role in triggering CRE. Quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM), as an optimal in vivo imaging technique to quantify iron deposition, is employed to analyze the iron quantity in CCM patients with epilepsy and further combined with brain structural and connectome analysis, to describe the difference between CCMs with and without epilepsy. In vivo biomarkers predicting CRE risk in CCM natural history and CRE control outcome after CCM surgical resection will be further identified to improve management strategy.