Stem cells -- helping improve drug design

October 2004

Stem cells could help improve our understanding of the action of existing drugs and aid in the discovery of new drugs for illnesses such as depression, obesity and anxiety. Ingrid Sanders reports on a team of researchers at Monash using stem cells for drug development.

The importance of stem cells in medical transplant technology has sparked much debate in the research and wider communities over recent years.

Unlimited potential: Stem cells such as these are an extremely valuable research tool.

Receiving much less attention, however, is the unlimited potential of stem cells as a research tool in drug design -- an area that researchers from Monash University are keen to further explore.

Professor Colin Pouton, head of the Department of Pharmaceutical Biology and Pharmacology, is working with a collaborative research team from Monash University's Victorian College of Pharmacy and the Department of Physiology to identify the actions of drugs on human nerve cells (neurons) and the production of neurons from embryonic stem cells.

Professor Pouton says the potential of embryonic stem cells in the development of new drugs for conditions such as depression, anxiety and obesity should not be underestimated.

"Embryonic stem cell biology is extremely valuable in developing new drugs, not just for their use in transplantation," he says.

And as well as assisting drug development, Professor Pouton says the research could also be useful to scientists and clinicians working on stem cell transplant technology.

The team of researchers, which includes Dr John Haynes from the Victorian College of Pharmacy and Dr Rick Lang from the Department of Physiology, has received a $500,000 grant from the Australian Research Council Linkage Project for its three-year study, 'Neurons isolated from embryonic stem cells as functional models for drug discovery'.

The team's industry partner, Stem Cell Sciences, is also helping fund the project.

New ground: From left, Professor Colin Pouton, Dr Rick Lang and Dr John Haynes are investigating how pure neurons react to certain drugs. Photo: Melissa Di Ciero

Professor Pouton says the project will consider a range of issues including different ways of reproducing human embryonic stem cells in significant numbers and the study of dopaminergic neurons from the mid-brain, and will attempt to determine how pure neurons react to certain drugs.

"We will be doing something that has never been done before -- researching the controlled development of neurons from embryonic stem cells and studying the actions of drugs on pure neurons," he says.

The team is currently working with embryonic stem cells from mice but is hoping to use human stem cells in their research in the near future.

"Working with human embryonic stem cells is technically very difficult -- while we can reproduce mouse embryonic stem cells by bathing cells in a growth medium and allowing them to divide freely, we can't reproduce or grow human cells in large numbers," says Professor Pouton.

"Once science overcomes this difficulty and can produce embryonic stem cells in a pure form, we will be able to direct the production of human neurons. And that is the key to allowing us to better understand the action of existing drugs and discover new drugs which act on the brain -- which is our ultimate aim."

Professor Pouton says there are many drugs on the market -- such as Prozac -- that could be refined to work on specific areas of the brain. "Obesity, schizophrenia, motivation, anxiety and depression are all conditions that could be treated with drugs which are designed to work on selective areas of the brain, so gaining a greater understanding of brain function is extremely valuable," he says.

He cites Parkinson's disease as an illness that could be treated with drugs identified through the team's research.

"To help research and understand illnesses of the brain such as Parkinson's disease, we first need to research the dopaminergic neurons and their reactions to certain drugs -- because it is the degeneration of these neurons that give rise to symptoms of the disease.

"If we can isolate, purify and reproduce dopaminergic neurons, which are the cells that degenerate in the disease, these cells could also be used for transplant purposes. If we can then reproduce particular cells, our work will also be useful to scientists who would like to transplant neurons into the brain of patients with illnesses such as Parkinson's disease.

"And we can also then identify how the cells function and react to different drugs to assist in the development of new drugs."

Action

For more information, contact Professor Colin Pouton from Monash University's Victorian College of Pharmacy, +61 3 9903 9562 or email colin.pouton@vcp.monash.edu.au.