Bionomics, WEHI team on drug discovery

After announcing a $6m capital raising yesterday, Adelaide epilepsy specialist company Bionomics Limited (ASX:BNO, US OTC: BMICY) has wasted no time mounting a project to identify new drugs to treat inherited epilepsy and anxiety disorders.

Today the company announced it had signed a letter of intent to establish a joint drug discovery research project with the Walter and Eliza Hall Medical Research Institute (WEHI) in Melbourne.

Under their agreement, Bionomics researchers in Adelaide will be run a high-throughput screen on select molecules from WEHI's library of more than 100,000 chemical compounds, to test for activity against the GABA receptor, an ion channel that Bionomics researchers have shown is involved in certain inherited epilepsies, and anxiety disorders.

Bionomics CEO Dr Deborah Rathjen said Dr Ian Street's research team, based WEHI's new $27 million Biotechnology Centre at Latrobe University's Research and Development Park in Bundoora, Melbourne, will make the initial selection of prospective compounds. The actual screening will be carried out by Bionomics researchers in Adelaide, using the company's proprietary high-throughput IonX platform.

The GABA receptor is a potassium ion channel, and Street's WEHI team has already identified a class of molecules with activity on potassium channels.

The IonX platform employs panel of cell lines expressing mutant GABA receptors responsible for certain types of inherited epilepsy in humans. These are used in a high-throughput in vitro screen to identify candidate molecules. The most promising molecules will then be tested for in vivo activity in a transgenic mouse developed by Bionomics researcher Dr Steve Petrou. The mouse is the world's first animal model of an inherited epilepsy -- specifically absence epilepsy, which causes petit mal seizures.

Rathjen said the most promising compounds from the IonX screening project would then be handed back to Street's WEHI research group, which will modify them to enhance their potency and specificity.

Dr Mark Vaney, vice-president of drug discovery for Bionomics, described the WEHI team's chemistry capabilities as among the best in the world, and said he was confident the WEHI team's capabilities would complement Bionomics' capabilities and innovative approach to drug discovery.