NRF Annual Report 2008
Scientific Committee Report: Grants for Brain Research
NRF Grants 2008
NRF Grants 2008 $18,000 to go towards Brain Tumour research
In the last NRF Newsletter, Professor Robert Vink the NRF Chair of Neurosurgical Research in the University of Adelaide announced that the Centre for Neurological Diseases will begin research into brain tumours
Associate Professor Mounir Ghabriel and Professor Alan Nimmo of the University of Adelaide have received a start-up grant from the NRF to begin this work.
Their grant application points out that the management of patients with brain tumours presents many difficult challenges. Brain tumours can within the brain itself (primary tumours) or spread from other parts of the body (secondary tumours or metastases). Secondary tumours cause almost ten times as many deaths as primary tumours. These studies Chair Scientific Committee will focus on two specific research questions. Prof Peter Reilly
The first concerns swelling (oedema) around tumours, which is an important determinant of patient outcome. It is known that the cerebral blood vessels in and around brain tumours become ‘leaky’, and that this underlies the development of the oedema, however, the mechanisms for this change in vascular permeability are unknown. Research in head injury and stroke undertaken at the Centre for Neurological Diseases suggests that neuropeptides play a key role in changing the permeability of the blood-brain barrier in these conditions and may therefore offer a new approach to the management of peritumoural oedema.
The second research question focuses on the way cancerous cells enter the brain through the blood-brain barrier which normally prevents cells crossing into the brain.
They will examine whether neuropeptides play any role in enabling these cancerous cells to cross the blood-brain barrier and so facilitate secondary tumour development.
Joan Estelle Hutchesson Estate Bequest
$48,000 to go towards Parkinson’s disease research
The NRF has been fortunate to receive a bequest of just over $48,000 from Joan Estelle Hutchesson, who died in 2006. Mrs Hutchesson directed that the bequest be used specifically for research into Parkinson’s disease.
The NRF is pleased to announce that Prof. Robert Vink, whose team has undertaken studies into this condition, will receive this grant over two years. Prof. Vink explained that Parkinson’s disease is the most common motor neuro-degenerative disorder in Australia, affecting 1% of the population over the age of 65.
“It is characterised by a slow progressive loss of dopaminergic neurons from the substantia nigra, with a subsequent decrease in dopamine within the striatum,” Prof. Vink said.
“Previous studies by others have shown that the neuropeptide, substance P, is decreased in late Parkinson’s disease, and that this decrease is reversed when patients are treated with levodopa. Thus, decreased substance P is thought to be associated with the disease itself.
“On the basis of our previous work in traumatic brain injury, inflammation and stroke, we hypothesise that it is in fact an increase in substance P that is associated with dopaminergic cell death, and that the decrease in late Parkinson’s disease simply reflects a loss of viable neurons. Consistent with this, preliminary work in our laboratory has shown that increased substance P is associated with dopaminergic cell death in the substantia nigra, and that this occurs well before the onset of clinical symptoms of the disease.
“Accordingly, this project will use a model of Parkinson’s Disease to examine the role of substance P in the disease, focusing on whether the neuropeptide is increased in the early stages of the disease.”
Peter Reilly, Chair Scientific Committee
