Motor neurone disease research wins $500k
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Perron Institute postdoctoral researcher Oliver Li has won a grant valued at more than $500,000 to lead a research project developing effective treatment for motor neurone disease.
The $549,537 grant was awarded by Victoria-based MND funder FightMND to accelerate scientific efforts to find an effective treatment for the disease, which causes weakness in muscles that eventually leads to paralysis.
The project, led by Dr Li, would look at drug development and is set to test a new strategy to repair and protect dying neurons and wasting muscles inflicted by MND using a gene therapy approach.
The research is expected to be carried out across two Perth locations at Perron Institute and at the Centre for Molecular Medicine and Innovative Therapeutics (CMMIT), a joint research centre between Murdoch University and Perron Institute.
Dr Li said the aim of the research would be to gain greater understanding of MND and work towards designing an effective therapeutic to slow disease progression and improve function and survival outcomes in MND patients.
“Our project focuses on a gene demonstrated to be associated with MND disease risk and disease progression, with a role in restricting nerve fibre regeneration,” Dr Li said.
“We have developed a novel approach to dial down the expression of this gene, hoping to progress this as a disease-modifying strategy to enhance nerve fibre growth and promote nerve cell survival for both sporadic and inherited forms of the disease.
“Nerve fibre degeneration is an integral feature of MND, a neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control voluntary muscle movement.
“This neurodegeneration results in loss of communication and connectivity between neurons and muscles, leading to progressive muscle weakness and atrophy, so promoting nerve fibre regeneration is seen as a viable therapeutic intervention strategy.”
Dr Loren Flynn and Professor Anthony Akkari will be co-leaders of the MND research project.