Our Research
Neuroinflammatory diseases such as multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, which affect the brain and spinal cord, are among the most serious health problems facing society today. These conditions pose a staggering personal, societal and economic burden: they affect tens of millions of people worldwide, and by 2050 this figure is expected to triple. Yet, there is no cure for these diseases and current treatments are only partly effective in alleviating symptoms and can be associated with serious side effects.
Neuroinflammatory conditions vary with respect to their clinical manifestations and they affect people of different ages and ethnicities, but they are all characterised by the gradual damage and loss of neurons - the cells that transmit signals from the brain and spinal cord to other parts of the body. As the diseases progress, neuronal dysfunction accumulates causing severe debilitation: patients can completely lose their memory or the ability to walk or speak.
The impact on sufferers and their families can be devastating and thus there is an urgent need to identify and develop new strategies for improved healthcare provision, but this is complicated by the difficulty of trying to study and to directly target neurons, given the relative inaccessibility of these cells.
The involvement of inflammation, an otherwise natural and innate response to injury and illness, is of particular interest in these diseases offering a novel avenue of study. Inflammatory mechanisms have been extensively studied in the context of other diseases, such as those arising due to infection, and thus present a more immediate avenue for identifying treatment options that can provide benefit across neuroinflammatory conditions.
Aims
Harness genetic information to facilitate the diagnosis of neuroinflammatory diseases
Determine how environmental factors contribute to disease development and progression
Understand why disease presentation and prevalence varies across different ethnic populations
Determine whether drug efficacy, indications, and potential side effects can be predicted prior to clinical testing to help prioritise therapeutic strategies that will likely confer the greatest benefit
Assess whether drugs already in use for other conditions can be repurposed to accelerate the treatment of neuroinflammatory disease patients - without the need for lengthy clinical trials that can take decades factors contribute to disease development and progression