Design and Synthesis of peptide - based drugs for multiple sclerosis [ 2004 - 2006 ]

Research Grant

Researchers: Prof David Craik (Principal investigator) ,  Prof Claude Bernard

Brief description Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an inflammatory disease of the central nervous system that affects ~1 million young adults worldwide. It is a debilitating disease for which there is currently no cure. The most effective treatment available, interferon-b (IFN-b) is useful for the treatment of some forms of the disease, reducing the relapse rate, that is the frequency of attacks or exacerbations of the disease, and delaying the time to onset of sustained progression of the disability. This treatment may, however, cause adverse side effects, result in the development of antibodies that neutralise its function and is prohibitively expensive. In addition it does not slow the sustained progression of the disease in 20-40% of patients with the two most common types of MS and does not appear to directly affect deterioration of the protective layer around neurons, myelin. There is clearly a need for the development of therapeutics that address these issues and the drug leads to be developed in this project may help to overcome some of these shortfalls. While the immune system of a healthy individual is able to distinguish between foreign molecules and its own molecules, in MS the immune system fails to do this. An immune response against important proteins that form part of the protective myelin layer around neurons occurs. This means that the integrity of the protective layer is compromised. The peptide-based drugs that we plan to develop in this project are designed to interfere with the interaction between these important myelin proteins and their immune system targets. This will leave the myelin proteins to carry out their normal physiological roles and should therefore significantly slow, if not halt, progression of the disease. Given the prevalence of MS such a development could have a profound impact on the health and quality of life of many individuals and their families, and has the potential to substantially reduce the economic burden of this disease on the community.

Funding Amount $AUD 351,000.00

Funding Scheme NHMRC Project Grants

Notes Standard Project Grant