TCD man chosen for the Boyle

Groundbreaking work on our immune systems by a Trinity College immunologist has been recognised by by an international panel of judges

NEW TREATMENTS for malaria, TB and pneumonia could be on the way as a result of research by the winner of the 2009 RDS Irish TimesBoyle Medal for Scientific Excellence.

Trinity College Dublin immunologist Prof Luke O’Neill won the prize in Dublin on Tuesday after an adjudication process involving seven leading international scientists (see panel, right).

O’Neill has made spectacular progress in learning how our immune systems, which protect us against disease, can also cause damaging inflammation.

“We are trying to understand the molecular biology of inflammation, and so gain insights into diseases like rheumatoid arthritis but also malaria, TB and pneumonia,” O’Neill says.

It is painstaking work that involves studying in very fine detail what goes on inside cells and what genes become active during inflammation. “We use sophisticated molecular biology techniques to try and unravel the complexity of these systems,” he says.

They look at human blood and tissue samples from healthy subjects to learn about substances released by the immune system, but they can also target specific diseases by looking at samples from subjects that have these disorders.

“That is how we found that the Mal gene is defective in people with malaria,” he said. “You can now use this diagnostically to say these [individuals] are at risk of malaria.”

His life in research began in the 1980s when the Dubliner went to Trinity College Dublin to study science. His final year project was on inflammation, a subject that would become his life’s work.

“Once you start doing research you learn just how exciting science is,” he says. “You get hooked then, you really get a high from it. You also realise that you can really make a difference.”

He travelled to the University of London for his PhD, a leading centre for research into inflammation and the immune system. He worked for several years as a post-doctoral fellow at Cambridge before returning to Trinity where he is currently the professor of biochemistry within the school of biochemistry and immunology.

The eventual payback from this meticulous research comes when a potential drug target emerges, something that scientist can block or accentuate in order to deliver a therapeutic effect.

Success in O’Neill’s lab encouraged Australian Mark Heffernan to build a start-up company around O’Neill and two of his main collaborators, fellow Trinity professors Kingston Mills and Dermot Kelleher. “He felt we were discovering new things that might be amenable to drug development,” says O’Neill.

The founders pulled together money to get the company, Opsona Therapeutics, up and running, but since then Opsona has attracted more than €26 million from investors.

One drug under study blocks the action of a particular immune system component called Toll2, which triggers a damaging inflammatory response immediately after a heart attack or a kidney transplant. “Toll2 drives this tissue damage and our drug stops it from working,” he says.

It performed well in initial experiments and he expects the new drug to go into initial human clinical trials by the end of 2010.

“Our drug will protect the kidney after transplant and will see the number of kidneys available for transplant increase five-fold,” he adds. This is because so many potential kidneys are lost soon after transplant due to inflammation triggered by the immune system.

As RDS Irish TimesBoyle Medal Laureate, Prof O'Neill will deliver a free public lecture describing his work November 16th at 7pm in the RDS Concert Hall, Ballsbridge.