News

Rotary award aids research into new MS drug targets

[ UniNews Vol. 15, No. 14  7 - 21 August 2006 ]

Research to identify new targets for drugs to improve treatment for multiple sclerosis has won University of Melbourne PhD candidate Laura-Jane Oluich a three-year research scholarship funded by the Australian Rotary Health Research Fund and the Rotary Club of Pakenham.

The Rotary scholarship, which is supplementary to Ms Oluich’s Australian Postgraduate Award, recognises a student’s academic excellence and their potential for research training in areas which will enhance community health and wellbeing.

Ms Oluich is conducting her doctoral research at the University’s Centre for Neuroscience and the Howard Florey Institute.

Multiple sclerosis (MS), a degenerative disease of the brain and spinal cord, affects 1 in 1000 Australian adults.

MS sees the death of oligodendrocytes – cells which produce a substance called myelin that insulates the axons of nerve cells (the electrical cables of the brain and spinal cord). The resulting reduced production of myelin impairs nerve cell function, resulting in symptoms ranging from blindness to quadriplegia.

Howard Florey Institute MS laboratory researchers are investigating the potential of brain stem cells to repair the brain damage associated with MS. Ms Oluich’s research aims to develop a novel mouse model of demyelination which replicates the earliest events in human MS, with a view to identifying new targets for drug intervention to enhance oligodendrocyte renewal.

Supervising Ms Oluich are Professor Trevor Kilpatrick, Director of the University’s Centre for Neuroscience and Head of the MS Research Group at the Howard Florey Institute, and Mr Toby Merson and Dr Holly Cate (Howard Florey Institute).

Ms Oluich received her Rotary award recently from Mr Des Jones of the Australian Rotary Health Research Fund and Mr Barry Morris of the Pakenham Rotary Club. Speaking at the presentation, Professor Kilpatrick noted the long-standing support of the fund and its local members for his group’s MS research.

$300k research award to spinal cord regrowth

[ UniNews Vol. 14, No. 7   2 - 16 May 2005 ]

A University of Melbourne researcher has been rewarded with a SpinalCure Australia Fellowship for her groundbreaking research to enhance the regrowth of spinal cord nerves after they are damaged.

Dr Yona Goldshmit (Centre for Neuroscience) is a member of the Australian team that recently successfully regrew spinal cord nerves in mice, restoring their ability to walk within weeks of a spinal injury.

A director of SpinalCure Australia , Mr Gary Allsop, presented Dr Goldshmit with the award, worth $300,000 over three years, at the University recently.

The award will enable Dr Goldshmit to continue her pioneering work into the role of the molecule EphA4 in spinal cord injury. Already the researchers have shown that mice lacking this molecule are capable of regrowing nerve cells.

The research involved collaboration between the Centre for Neuroscience and School of Physiotherapy at the University of Melbourne, the Queensland Brain Institute at the University of Queensland and the Queensland Institute of Medical Research – see uninews.unimelb.edu.au/articleid_1908.html

Dr Goldshmit will work to develop methods for blocking the action of EphA4 in normal mice in the hope that this will eventually translate to humans and enable human spinal nerves to grow back across a severed spinal cord.

“This award is vital for allowing our research to continue and we hope to make considerable progress over the next three years,” she says.

SpinalCure Australia is a not-for-profit research organisation dedicated to finding a cure for spinal cord injury –www.spinalcure.org.au