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New drugs may stop epileptic seizures

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Two new drugs with the potential to block epileptic seizures have been developed by Australian scientists working at the Children’s Medical Research Institute (CMRI).   

The news is welcome for epilepsy sufferers who, in the most severe cases, can have up to 70 seizures a day.  Existing drugs fail to control seizures in a third of epilepsy patients.

"The raft of current therapies all work in much the same way, dampening down electrical activity in the brain. This causes side effects such as a feeling of fuzziness and impaired learning," says Professor Phil Robinson, Head of the CMRI team.

"And anyway, they just don’t work for a third of sufferers."

The two new drugs block dynamin – an enzyme vital to nerve signal transmission.

"The drugs we have developed don’t interfere with normal brain activity.  They only block signal transmission when it is in the pathological state of rapid prolonged firing, as occurs during a seizure."

Professor Robinson’s laboratory has been investigating dynamin in nerve communication for 15 years. Realising dynamin’s essential role in healthy communication – without it, our brain can’t send messages to the rest of our body – he realised that the aberrant communication occurring during an epileptic fit could be moderated by controlling the dynamin. 


One in 120 Australians suffer from epilepsy. Seizures can prevent them from working, driving or attending school, and can cause them to sustain other injuries.

With such an impact on the community this work has attracted close to AU$3 million in funds for the research and development of epilepsy drugs over the next three years: $2.2 million from the National Health and Medical Research Council and half a million from the prestigious USA-based Epilepsy Therapy Project.

The grants provide funds to put the dynamin blocking drugs through preclinical testing to confirm their potential to treat epilepsy. Each class of drugs consists of a panel of around 1,000 chemical compounds, and the key goal of the research is to narrow this down to two or three from each class to take forward for testing in humans.

"It is through the generosity of Jeans for Genes supporters that we have been able to get this research to the point where we have now been able to attract significant funding to do the pre-clinical testing necessary before human trials can take place," said Professor Robinson.

Professor Robinson from CMRI and Associate Professor Adam McCluskey from the University of Newcastle, have outlined the development of two new classes of drugs called dynoles and Bis-T in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry and ChemMedChem.

(Source: Children’s Medical Research Institute (CMRI): Journal of Medicinal Chemistry: August 2009)


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Posted On: 12 August, 2009
Modified On: 16 January, 2014

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