The cures inside

CASE STUDY:Research at Trinity College Dublin could have far-reaching effects on therapies for cancer and auto-immune conditions such as multiple sclerosis

NEW RESEARCH into the immune system and how it works could lead to breakthroughs in therapies for diseases such as cancer or auto-immune conditions such as multiple sclerosis.

The research is part of the Immunology Research Centre (IRC), which is led by Trinity College Dublin. It brings together some of the leading immunologists in Ireland, with the goal of identifying new stimulators of receptors of innate immunity.

Lead principal investigator (PI) on the project, Professor Kingston Mills, says the centre, which brings together a cluster of researchers, offers the chance for real collaborative research among the experts, backed up with the know-how of its industrial partners, Schering Plough and Opsona Therapeutics.

"Our original vision was to set up a centre of excellence on research in immunology," he explains.

"What led to the cluster was having in Trinity a collection of high-powered immunologists who were working reasonably closely together.

"This gave us an opportunity of really coming together, trying to cement some real collaboration that included a project where we were all involved.

"We had complementary areas of expertise, and we had particular problems that we thought we might be able to tackle through this interdisciplinary approach.

The key was a mix of funding from Science Foundation Ireland and the experience and industrial side that two companies - Schering Plough and Opsona Therapeutics - would add to the mix.

The €10 million project is funded largely by SFI, which will give €7.5 million over the five-year life of the scheme. The remaining 25 per cent of the funds come from its industrial partners, Schering Plough and Opsona Therapeutics, a spin-off company that came out of Trinity a number of years ago and now employs up to 20 people.

The project will look at identifying what pathogens stimulate different receptors in the immune system, with the aim of identifying what can turn on and off certain t-cells in the immune system to help formulate therapies to treat auto-immune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, type-I diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis.

"The interest from our lab is very much on how different types of t-cells either cause damage, in terms of auto-immunity, or protect us from infection."

They then consider how to regulate the different types of those t-cells. This is important in terms of developing new therapies for treating auto-immunity, or as therapies for cancer.

Different pathogens - bacteria, viruses and parasites - have components that that interact with the immune system, binding to receptors and activating innate immunity.

The project is hoping to identify which molecules in the pathogens activate the innate immunity.

"These are not only of interest academically, but they are also potentially useful as drugs, because the molecules activated in the innate immune response are useful in generating vaccines. The second application would be in tumour therapy."

Mills says having a company with the experience and resources of Schering Plough as its partner will have significant benefits for the project and its research.

"Schering Plough has a big presence in Ireland. Internationally, it's a big pharma-biotech company which has an interest in immunology. The industrial partners bring a considerable amount of know-how to the project. In return, they get the opportunity to licence the intellectual property that comes out of the research. The universities will initially own the intellectual property, but the companies then have the right to licence it.

"It's quite difficult for universities to develop intellectual property on their own, so this is useful to have a company lined up interested in hopefully developing it," explains Mills.

"The industrial partners have the opportunity to take it into clinical trials, opening up new possibilities for the research. The cluster and its research could have some positive effects for the economy too - an important consideration in the current economic gloom.

The project will also create its own employment, with up to 20 new posts expected for the duration of the project, with postdoctoral posts and PhD students required to work on the research. There is also the possibility of extending the project at the end of its five-year term.

Once the cluster's research gets under way, it will also be, in effect, training up a new batch of potential academic researchers or employees for multinationals, who will leave the project with a considerable amount of experience in academic research, but also with expertise of working with industrial partners.