Dundee University is to join forces with one of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies to research a devastating brain disorder.
Up to 8,000 people in the UK have Huntington’s disease, which causes progressive degeneration of the brain cells, slowly impairing a sufferer’s ability to walk, think, talk and reason and eventually causing their death.
Although there are some treatments to aid patients in coping with the symptoms, there is as yet no cure.
The university’s £1m project will seek to build on the work of Professor Susan Schweiger, who has discovered a mechanism that controls production of a protein involved in the development of the condition.
She said: ”If we can inhibit this process then we may prevent the build-up of this toxic protein in the brain and hopefully provide a treatment for Huntington’s disease.”
The work is being backed by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), one of the giants of the global pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. Based in the UK, it has 96,000 employees in 100 countries and annual sales of £28bn.
Last year it spent £3.6bn on research and development, and it is the UK’s biggest private-sector provider of R&D funding.
As Huntington’s is relatively rare it is classed an ‘orphan disease’ and consequently has not been seriously targeted by the pharmaceutical industry, which tends to concentrate on more common and therefore potentially more profitable illnesses.
However, there has been a trend in recent years for big firms such as GSK and Pfizer to diversify their product portfolios and seek new revenue streams.
GSK’s breakthrough collaboration with the university is being seen positively by the Huntington’s Disease Association, which supports sufferers and their families.
Chief executive Cath Stanley said: ”This is an exciting step forward which will offer much needed hope to families affected by Huntington’s disease.”
Huntington’s is an inherited condition and is caused by a defective gene. Anyone with a parent who has it has a 50% chance of developing it.
Symptoms typically appear between the ages of 30 and 50 and get worse.
The project will be led by Professor Schweiger and her research team, along with Dr Ros Langston and Professor Jeremy Lambert from the division of neuroscience, located in the university’s new Medical Research Institute at Ninewells Hospital.
It will also involve Dr David Gray from the Drug Discovery Unit.
It brings together expertise in molecular genetics, behaviour, brain physiology and drug development in an collaboration withresearchers at GSK.
Prof Lambert said: ”This is a truly interdisciplinary effort and one which we are uniquely placed to tackle in Dundee.
”It is extremely heartening to see GSK, a global pharmaceutical company, focusing on an orphan disease like Huntington’s. Their involvement greatly increases the chance of developing a treatment for this devastating disease.”