Could an ancient virus cause Motor Neurone Disease (MND), and if so, could targeted therapy against the virus lead to more effective treatments of the disease?
That's what a team from the Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute (FHMRI) is seeking to discover in a groundbreaking new research project.
Under the leadership of FHMRI researcher Associate Professor Mary-Louise Rogers, the team has received almost $1 million in funding from leading Australian funding organisation FightMND to continue Rogers' innovative research into MND.
Motor neurone disease (MND) is a fatal neurological condition, in which the nerve cells controlling the muscles that enable us to move, speak, breathe and swallow undergo degeneration and die.
One in 300 Australians will be diagnosed with MND during their lifetime, however reliable diagnosis occurs late in disease progression, resulting in irreversible nerve damage, with an average life expectancy of just 27 months after diagnosis.
"There are still huge gaps in our understanding of what causes motor neurone disease, and in the development of effective treatment options," Associate Professor Rogers said.
"With no known cure, we urgently need to gain a better understanding of this disease so we can develop more successful therapies and improve patient outcomes."
The research project will investigate if an endogenous retrovirus causes motor neurone disease, and whether antisense therapy against a retroviral protein could help fight the disease.
Let's break down some of those key phrases:
- Endogenous means naturally occurring within the body.
- Endogenous Retroviruses (ERVs) are ancient viruses that began to be integrated into the human genome some 30-40 million years ago and became fixed in our DNA.
- Antisense therapy is an approach to fighting diseases using short DNA-like molecules called antisense oligonucleotides, and has recently emerged as the most promising hope for the treatment of a range of neurodegenerative and neuromuscular disorders.
So essentially, the researchers are trying to see if treatments commonly used against other diseases might work against MND.
"Our cutting-edge project will use genomic and cellular tools to map out how endogenous retroviral remnants may alter cells and cause motor neurone disease," Rogers said.
"We will then test whether antisense therapy targeted to an endogenous retroviral protein can be used to successfully treat MND."
