NEW BIOMARKER
MAKES ITS MARK FOR MOTOR NEURONE DISEASE Researchers have discovered a new and simple test that tracks motor neurone disease (MND) progression and could transform the way future MND clinical trials are conducted.
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or the past six years, Dr Mary-Louise Rogers and her team from Flinders University have focussed their MND research efforts on a urinary protein fragment called p75ECD, which is shed from nerves when they are damaged. The journey of discovery was sparked by a research paper from the 1980s that recorded changes in urinary p75ECD levels of rats with nerve injury.
SIGNIFICANCE OF TRACKING P75ECD
“We wondered if MND would produce elevated p75ECD levels in urine like those found in the rats who had endured nerve injury. If so, we saw the potential to develop a pretty neat biomarker for MND that is directly related to nerve degeneration,” says Dr Rogers.
Researchers have been looking for an MND biomarker from either blood or cerebral spinal fluid, but none of the markers identified so far change with disease progression. 26 INSPIRE 006 | 2017
Dr Rogers and her team set about investigating p75ECD using mouse models of MND. They found high levels of p75ECD in the urine of the mice. In addition, increased levels of p75ECD were found in the urine of a few people with MND. These preliminary findings led researchers to investigate p75ECD further. Flinders University researchers, Drs Mary-Louise Rogers and Stephanie Shepheard in collaboration with Professor Michael Benatar and Joanne Wuu from the University of Miami and Dr David Schultz from the MND clinic at the Repatriation General Hospital/Flinders Medical Centre (South Australia) undertook a study of the urinary p75ECD biomarker in people with MND attending clinics in South Australia as well as the USA. The researchers compared the level of p75ECD protein in 54 people with MND and 45 individuals without MND. They
DID YOU KNOW?
MND is a terminal, neurological disease in which the nerve cells controlling the muscles that enable us to move, speak, swallow and breathe degenerate and die. The average life expectancy of people with MND is just 2.5 years after diagnosis. More than 2000 people are living with MND in Australia.