The 2nd PCH Research Network Meeting took place at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in May 2025. International researchers, physicians and employees of the PCH2cure project came together in Karlsruhe, Germany.
In June 2025, Dr. Julia Matilainen, representing the PCH2cure-project, attended the “Rare as One” meeting of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in Nevada, USA.
“He won’t be able to play football with you, but he will cheer you on!”
These are the words with which the parents of Tim, now 3 years old, explained the condition of the newborn family member to his two older brothers.
“What helped most was the endless love for my children”. Brigitte from Germany is the mother of Leonard and Kilian, both of whom have PCH2. Leonard died in 1995 at the age of nine months. Kilian was born in 1996 and is now 27 years old.
February 28, 2025 was Rare Disease Day. To mark this day, the University Hospital of Tübingen made a short video together with Axel Lankenau, father of two sons with PCH2.
With the newly published article ‘Growth charts for pontocerebellar hypoplasia type 2A’, we are the first to create disease-specific percentiles for PCH2A.
Pontocerebellar hypoplasia (PCH), a rare neurodevelopmental disorder, is associated with changes in genes coding for the tRNA splicing endonuclease (TSEN). This multicomponent enzyme is involved in generating essential building blocks for protein synthesis, a process that is crucial to establish and maintain the function of healthy cells. TSEN is found in every cell of the human body but the effect of the PCH-linked mutations only manifests in specific regions of the brain; a phenomenon not understood at all yet.
In their recently published preprint “Brain morphometry and psychomotor development in children with PCH2A”, Pretzel et al. analyzed 78 brain MRIs from a total of 57 children with PCH2A.
The term pontocerebellar hypoplasia (PCH) refers to a group of disorders characterized by abnormal brain development leading to severe intellectual and physical disability. They are inherited in an autosomal recessive…
In most cases, the unborn child is not diagnosed with PCH2 during pregnancy. However, it has been possible to diagnose the condition before birth using genetic testing for several years…
Puberty is a time of change. The child turns into an adult, both physically and mentally. With the onset of sex hormone production, the adolescent body begins to change. Course…
