WEHI, Iliad to collaborate on MS project

Melbourne drug development company Iliad Chemicals will collaborate with scientists at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI) on the development of a new class of compounds with the potential to treat multiple sclerosis.

The compounds act as inhibitors to a Kv1.3 potassium ion channel protein involved in the T cell proliferation response, which is over-expressed in T cells associated with a number of autoimmune diseases including MS.

WEHI researcher Jonathan Baell has been working with US researcher Prof George Chandy at the University of California, Irvine, on the development of drugs targeting the inflammatory T cells for a number of years.

According to Iliad CEO Bernard Flynn, Iliad has in-licensed the leads identified by WEHI and will provide financial support to WEHI researchers for ongoing research. Iliad will also put its novel synthetic chemistry platform to work to identify more compounds in the same class and to optimise potential therapeutic leads.

"The MultiCore technology has a synergy with the leads already identified in terms of the structural class," Flynn said.

In the short term, the collaborators plan to move from in vitro studies into animal models of MS to validate the ability of the compounds to inhibit the activity of the ion channels. Optimisation of drug-like lead compounds, with specific activity against the Kv1.3 ion channel, but not other ion channels, will also be undertaken.

Flynn said the company hopes to be able to move into the lead selection phase by the end of 2005 or early 2006, and if all goes well with the formal pre-clinical studies, a drug lead could be in Phase I clinical trials in 2007.