AusBiotech profile: ReWire Therapies

Heading the list of renowned scientists running ReWire Therapies is Professor James Vickers of the University of Tasmania, a leading experimental pathologist with an interest in neurodegenerative disease and brain injury, and Professor Adrian West, a molecular neuroscientist also from the University of Tasmania.

Joining this east-west enterprise is Professor Lyn Beazley, a professor of zoology from the University of Western Australia, head of the WA Neurotrauma Research program and WA's chief scientist. Another well-known West Australian, the burns surgeon, biotech entrepreneur and all-round VIP, Clinical Professor Fiona Wood, also adds her considerable practical and intellectual weight to the mix.

This stellar group, which for some reason needs a scientific advisory board that happens to be chaired by ex-Science editor and neuroscientist Professor Floyd Bloom, was brought together by Dr Hugh Dawkins, a noted WA-based biotech figure who saw the need to address nerve repair and restorative therapies for trauma management.

Together, ReWire Therapies is able offer R&D on a contract basis using its cell culture and animal models and to develop partnerships for drug development using the intellectual resources at its disposal.

The company has a number of different in vitro and in vivo assays for neuronal survival, proliferation and differentiation, Adrian West says.

"What we do in particular is mature neuronal cultures," he says. "Every man and his dog can do neuronal cultures but they are from embryonic and foetal animals, whereas we put mature neurons in culture, which are much more realistic in terms of regenerative response.

"They are much better models for things like acute injuries or neurogenerative diseases. We can screen compounds with the ability to promote regeneration or look at neuronal survival. We also have animal models and we specialise in the culture of a number of different glial cells and of course we have access to Professor Wood's skin regeneration model."

The 'workhorse' model for ReWire Therapies is its 21-day in vitro neuronal culture that comes from rat cortical cells, he says. "These cells maintain a mature, differentiated phenotype and they have a stereotypical response to injury. They show a very similar regenerative response to neurons you see in vivo and a similarity to the plaques you see in Alzheimer's disease."

Speciality models include axonal damage, oxidative stress, excitotoxicity, gliosis and neuroprotection, and reinnervation following burns, which is where Wood's particular expertise comes in.

"One of the areas we are particularly interested in is central nervous system injury repair," West says. "That brings in the skills of myself, James and Lyn but we also have an interest in tissue regeneration.

"Despite the wonderful advances that Fiona and others have done, the reinnervation of skin grafts is a big problem - both over-reinnervation and under-reinnervation. If you have too many nerves you get itching, and people actually rub or scratch their graft off. Too little and they have no feeling and they knock it off. What we want to do is explore how we can improve reinnervation of grafts and tissue regeneration generally."