Janet van Eersel
Preclinical development of specific tau-binding compounds to target underlying disease mechanisms for the treatment of dementia
Award
Bondi2Berry & Bondi2BlueMtns Project Grant
Status
Completed
Start Date
1 March 2021
About the project
Alzheimer’s disease and frontotemporal dementia are two of the most common causes of dementia. Unfortunately, there is no effective treatment or cure for either of these disorders. Therefore, the development and testing of new therapies is urgently required. Although these two dementias are quite distinct from one another, in both conditions a protein called tau is thought to play a central role in the disease process. One mechanism by which tau is thought to be involved is via excessive interactions with another protein called fyn. Together, fyn and tau set off a cascade of events that lead to overstimulation of neuronal brain cells, eventually causing cell death.
Dr Janet van Eersel’s project focused on whether the interactions between tau and fyn could be disrupted or reduced in the brains of dementia patients. This would provide therapeutic benefits. Through cutting-edge technology that can screen up to 14 billion compounds at once, Dr van Eersel identified drugs that can potentially block interactions between tau and fyn. These drugs were tested in cell culture models to determine their effectiveness and potential for the treatment of dementia. This will lay the groundwork for pre-clinical testing and, hopefully, clinical trial testing in patients.
Where are they now?
At the time of this award, Dr van Eersel was a Senior Lecturer and Group Leader of the Drug Discovery research team within the Dementia Research Centre at Macquarie University.
