Brain tech to speed up development of Alzheimer’s drugs
LONDON: The development of drugs for Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative conditions will be fast-tracked and therapies may eventually be cheaper as a result of a groundbreaking new testing method.
Small Melbourne biotech Tessara Therapeutics has partnered with the CSIRO and the Florey Institute to develop “real brain technology” that allows drugs to be tested on cell-engineered, microscopic 3D models of healthy and diseased human brain micro-tissues. The micro-tissue is created from stem cells and biomaterials, and avoids the need to test drugs on animals.
Neuroscientist and Tessara Therapeutics co-founder Christos Papadimitriou said using brain micro-tissue in drug screening was better than using animals as it was physiologically relevant to humans and indicated at an early stage whether a drug candidate was likely to be successful.
“It’s very well understood throughout the industry that between 90 and 95 per cent of drugs that are found safe in non-clinical trials fail during human trials,” Dr Papadimitriou said. “So the use of systems like the RealBrain technology, which is a human-based physiologically relevant system, can improve these results.
“Because we are using human cells to develop these micro-tissues, then the microenvironment in which we test the drugs is based on human physiology.
“Instead of spending billions of dollars on drugs that have very, very low rates of success, we can screen and minimise further development to those that have higher success rates.”
Dementia is the second-most common cause of death in Australia, with 70 per cent of cases caused by Alzheimer’s disease. Dementia accounted for 14,919 deaths in Australia in 2020-21.
“There hasn’t been any significant update in the last 20 years with the development of any compound that can stop the progression of Alzheimer’s disease,” Dr Papadimitriou said.
“So there is a significant unmet medical need, and having a technology that can be shared with many, many companies and scientists around the world and help identify new drugs that can potentially help or stop the progression of Alzheimer’s disease is a very important thing.
“At the same time, it can decrease the prices of drugs because pharmaceutical companies need less money and time in the development of the drug.”
The US Food and Drug Administration recently passed legislation that means it is no longer mandatory for drugs to be tested on animals, opening the way for more modern and effective drug-testing methods.
The development of Tessara’s RealBrain technology was assisted by grants from the CSIRO, with the company also later partnering with the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health.
Professor of neuroscience at Florey, Paul Adlard, who has researched Alzheimer’s disease for 25 years, said the FDA’s new legislation and the boost it gave companies such as Tessara would result in cheaper and safer drugs. “A system that allows us to more quickly look at the toxicity or potential efficacy of compounds in a model that is physiologically relevant that isn’t costing animals’ lives and isn’t taking years of research is going to be advantageous for us as re searchers,” he said.
