Therapeutic Strategies And Screening Methods For PKC Epsilon Antagonists In The Treatment Of Type 2 Diabetes
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$157,375.00
Summary
Type 2 diabetes is a chronic disease affecting over a million Australians and hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Its prevalence is rising due to several factors such as an increase in caloric intake, the aging of the population, and the common sedentary lifestyle of Western civilization. Type 2 diabetes occurs when the pancreas is unable to produce enough insulin for the body to cope with rising blood glucose levels after a meal, and has been strongly linked to obesity. We have now shown ....Type 2 diabetes is a chronic disease affecting over a million Australians and hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Its prevalence is rising due to several factors such as an increase in caloric intake, the aging of the population, and the common sedentary lifestyle of Western civilization. Type 2 diabetes occurs when the pancreas is unable to produce enough insulin for the body to cope with rising blood glucose levels after a meal, and has been strongly linked to obesity. We have now shown that an enzyme found in the pancreas becomes inappropriately activated under conditions of fat oversupply, and plays an important role in the development of defects in insulin release from the pancreas in response to glucose. Excitingly, we have also shown that inhibition of this enzyme can partly reverse these defects once they have been established. We now intend to further validate this enzyme as a drug target by determining the optimum dosing regimen for the treatment of type 2 diabetes in a mouse model, and testing whether this approach can be used in conjunction with previously-developed drugs which promote insulin action, to improve bood glucose handling better than either treatment alone. This would promote the enzyme as a therapeutic strategy in the treatment of Type 2 diabetes. We also plan to develop a high throuhput screen to identify novel inhibitors of the enzyme, which will further increase the attractiveness of the project to pharmaceutical companies, who are better able to implent full commercialization of our findings.Read moreRead less
Development Of A Serum Based Test For Aggressive Prostate Cancer.
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$144,950.00
Summary
Prostate cancer is relatively slow growing, taking decades to reach clinical significance. A critical phase in the progression of prostate cancer is the transformation from latent (or dormant) to aggressive tumours; hence the saying that many men die with prostate cancer, rather than of prostate cancer. We aim to develop a test utilising inhibin-activin proteins as surrogate markers of aggressive disease based on our previous studies of a significant correlation between the expression of inhibin ....Prostate cancer is relatively slow growing, taking decades to reach clinical significance. A critical phase in the progression of prostate cancer is the transformation from latent (or dormant) to aggressive tumours; hence the saying that many men die with prostate cancer, rather than of prostate cancer. We aim to develop a test utilising inhibin-activin proteins as surrogate markers of aggressive disease based on our previous studies of a significant correlation between the expression of inhibins in tissues from men with high grade prostate cancer. This study aims to validate the correlation using serum rather than a tissue based assay.Read moreRead less