Flinders teams with pharma Elan in Parkinson's research

A research team at Flinders University in South Australia is collaborating with biopharmaceutical company Elan Pharmaceuticals on a project investigating Parkinson's disease.

The collaboration will focus on abnormal proteins in Lewy bodies, a type of inclusion body seen in the brain tissue of Parkinson's disease sufferers.

Dr Wei-Ping Gai, who has been studying the brain tissue of patients with Parkinson's disease for the last 15 years, explained that Lewy bodies are tiny inclusions formed from abnormal protein complexes.

They are only found in the brain tissue of patients with Parkinson's disease and a closely related condition called Lewy body dementia, and are thought to hold clues about the mechanisms leading to the development of Parkinson's disease.

Gai has developed a technique to extract the Lewy bodies from brain tissue held in a brain tissue bank using antibodies to alpha-synuclein, which allows the proteins and other components of the Lewy bodies to be studied using approaches including proteomics to identify proteins.

Alpha-synuclein is the key protein in Lewy bodies, Gai said, and is the focus of the Flinders-Elan collaboration. Mutations in the alpha-synuclein gene have already been linked to Parkinson's disease.

The project will involve purifying Lewy bodies, identifying abnormalities in the alpha-synuclein protein and ultimately developing new drug therapies, he said.

Elan Pharmaceuticals has recently established a research program on Parkinson's disease headed by Dr Dora Games.

Gai said that the collaboration was for a period of three years and Elan would be able to license technology developed by his team.

The agreement with Elan was negotiated by Flinders Consulting, the contracting arm of Flinders University.

The managing director of Flinders Consulting, Dr Wayne Harvey, said the collaboration resulted from an approach by Elan and will provide the research team with additional resources for their research as well as the opportunity for Flinders researchers to work with Elan in the US.