Bionomics, Florey in epilepsy collaboration

Adelaide biomed company Bionomics (ASX: BNO) has established a strategic research collaboration with the Howard Florey Institute of Experimental Physiology and Medicine that it hopes will speed its development of new drugs for epilepsy and other brain disorders.

Bionomics' new partner is rapidly building an international reputation for its neuroscience expertise, and is probably the best equipped neuroscience research centre in the southern hemisphere. Among other research equipment, it has its own functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) device for studying dynamic patterns of neural activity in living brains.

Bionomics' CEO and MD, Dr Deborah Rathjen, said the collaboration complemented the company's existing links with the University of Melbourne, and the Adelaide Women's and Children's Hospital (WCH).

An important factor in the new alliance was the Florey's appointment of leading Melbourne University epilepsy researcher and Bionomics vice-president Dr Steve Petrou as a Senior Research Fellow.

Petrou, an electrophysiologist, was a key player in the development of Bionomics' ionX drug discovery and development platform for central nervous system disorders.

He developed a transgenic mouse strain with a human gene carrying a mutation associated with an inherited disorder called absence epilepsy.

The Florey alliance gives Bionomics an integrated research system with few parallels in Australian biomedical research.

At the Epilepsy Research Institute in Heidelberg, in Melbourne, Prof Sam Bercovic's team conducts clinical research that has allowed geneticists in Prof Grant Sutherland's laboratory at WCH to locate and clone mutant genes associated with different, inherited forms of epilepsy in Australian families.

Petrou's research has confirmed that such mutations disrupt the normal function of ion channels that mediate nerve transmissions in the brain, and the mouse model he developed would allow Bionomics to test candidate compounds for treating absence epilepsy in humans, as well as providing broader insights into the mechanisms of epilepsy.

Petrou's appointment to the Florey Institute, and the new agreement, gives Bionomics access to the most advanced tools for studying brain function -- including comparisons of normal with abnormal patterns of nerve activity in the brains of animal models.

In the longer term, it may be possible to use fMRI to observe abnormal patterns of brain activity in some of Bercovic's epilepsy-affected subjects, according to Bionomics VP Business Development, Francis Placanica -- although the holy grail of 'catching' an epileptic episode with dynamic brain imaging remains formidable.