Victoria Fellowship winner works on relaxin

Victoria Fellowship winner Daniel Scott will be using his prize money to spend some time at Stanford University in the US working on an inhibitor of pregnancy hormone relaxin.

Scott, a PhD student in Geoffrey Tregear's Relaxin lab at the Howard Florey Institute working with Ross Bathgate, has discovered a small protein -- LGR7-Truncate -- a naturally occurring splice variant of the relaxin receptor LGR7 that prevents relaxin-induced activation of the receptor.

The protein is also able to block the action of insulin-like peptide 3 (INSL3), another reproductive hormone which plays a role in germ cell maturation.

Scott says preliminary evidence suggests that LGR7-Truncate acts in a tissue specific manner to prepare the uterus for the birth process.

"Before giving birth, relaxin levels are at their highest, however for birth to occur relaxin's actions are suppressed in the uterus. LGR7-Trunctate is specifically highly expressed in pregnant uterus and may be the mystery suppressor of relaxin," he said.

The protein is a good candidate for the development of drugs affecting the complex relaxin system, and there is particular interest in its potential role as a contraceptive. Scott plans to visit Stanford researcher Aaron Hsueh's laboratory to test LGR7-Truncate in Hsueh's animal models for germ cell maturation.

Scott is also interested in the uses of the relaxin inhibitor in the brain, where relaxin's roles are relatively unknown.

"We're not sure what relaxin does in the brain. One of the good things about discovering this antagonist is that we should be able to use it to elucidate relaxin's role in the brain," he says.

Scott said he planned to make two trips to the US in the next 12 months or so, the first next month to attend the Relaxin 2004 conference and spend about a month in Hsueh's lab. Early next year, he'll head back to Stanford to spend some more time there, and he also plans to visit a few companies in the US and Europe that are working on products targeting relaxin.