A new centre will help link basic medical research with better treatments for patients. Dick Ahlstrom reports
Patient care should benefit greatly from advanced research at the Conway Institute of Biomolecular and Biomedical Research. The knowledge gained from detailed work in the laboratory can quickly be used to improve their treatment.
A good example involves investigations by Prof Catherine Godson, an assistant professor of medicine at University College Dublin and the lead co-ordinator for molecular-medicine research at the Conway.
The work looks at how diabetes damages the tissues of the kidneys and how a substance produced by the body can help to reduce harmful inflammation. Both projects involve examining what goes on inside cells and how they respond to disease conditions.
Godson explains that diabetes has become an epidemic, affecting increasing numbers of both adults and children. With the disease comes long-term damage to a variety of tissues, including those in the kidney, the retina and the smallest blood vessels. Godson and her team are looking at diabetes-related kidney-cell death, called nephropathy.
Kidney-cell cultures are exposed to the high sugar concentrations typical of diabetes, a disease that stops the body from properly controlling blood-sugar levels. The cells respond by releasing proteins; the team identifies and characterises the substances associated with nephropathy. Discoveries so far include completely novel proteins and proteins whose link with nephropathy had been unknown.
The work could lead to new treatments to block the cell death caused by nephropathy, and the research could lead to diagnostic tests to recognise the presence of marker proteins long before the subsequent damage becomes detectable.
Another Conway project involves a molecular study of lipoxins, substances produced by the body to halt damaging inflammation. The body responds vigorously to fight off any infection, producing the effect we recognise as inflammation.
Many diseases, including arthritis, lupus and psoriasis, occur when the body doesn't reverse the inflammatory response, producing a long-term chronic inflammatory reaction that causes lasting damage and discomfort.
"The reason we are interested in them is they have anti-inflammatory properties," says Godson, "and they aren't just anti-something, they help other cells to shut down inflammation."
Her research has shown that the presence
of lipoxins can boost the clean-up activity of a type of white blood cell, the macrophage. These cells swallow up and remove dead and dying
cells in a process called phagocytosis. It is an essential service, because dead cells can provoke inflammation if they are left behind.
In work funded by the Health Research Board, the Wellcome Trust and Enterprise Ireland, she and colleagues conducted a series of in vitro and in vivo experiments showing that phagocytosis activity increases between 30 and 50 per cent in the presence of lipoxins. The work is important because inflammation is usually treated with painkillers or sometimes steroids, drugs that have powerful side effects. Understanding the molecular processes of phagocytosis and the part played by lipoxins could provide alternatives
to steroids to treat chronic inflammation,
says Godson.Biomedical research in Ireland moves onto a higher level this morning with the official opening of the flagship Conway Institute of Biomolecular and Biomedical Research on University College Dublin's Belfield campus. Funded by the programme for research in third-level institutions, the Conway will become the focus for UCD's efforts in medical research.
The Tánaiste, Mary Harney, will open and then take a short tour of the 11,200-square-metre centre, which will provide laboratory and teaching space, offices and study areas for 60 senior scientists and 350 postdoctoral and graduate researchers.
"One of our key messages will be directed towards the taxpayers, showing this is a resource for Ireland and the positive impact it will have for Ireland and the world," says Dr Philip Nolan, the centre's director. "The Conway is a large, multidisciplinary science institute. The approach was to take people from all sorts of disciplines, from chemists to the physicians out in the hospitals."
It brings together expertise in drug discovery, physiology, pharmacology, biochemistry and clinical practice for "a collaborative enterprise focused on specific problems", says Nolan. Although its research will range widely, the Conway has a "hit list" of areas where it will concentrate its efforts, including breast cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's disease, arthritis and other chronic inflammatory diseases.
"This is not theoretical work, it is applied to real patients and to diseases affecting Irish people," says Nolan.
The idea behind the Conway grew out of the programme for research in third-level institutions, which is organised by the Higher Education Authority. To qualify for funding, half of which comes from the Government and half from private sources, institutions must pursue a strategic plan to develop existing skills.
Nolan says UCD had strengths in medical and clinical research and decided to seek backing for a new kind of integrated research centre.
Having won €90 million under three cycles of the programme, the Conway now has "the infrastructure to do first-class research". It has also strived to entice the best graduates, postdoctoral researchers and academics from home and abroad. Many are now attracting additional large-scale funding from Science Foundation Ireland.
"Now we can provide them with something in Ireland that will allow them to do just as well as when they were abroad," says Nolan.
The Conway has three research pillars. The first is synthesis, the chemical biology needed to develop new drug therapies. The second is integrative biology, an approach that looks at cells and tissues as systems, not as unconnected, individualised elements.
The third is molecular medicine, the business of linking advanced biochemistry in the lab with medical practice in hospitals. This includes animal health, given the economic importance of the agricultural sector.
Nolan views the programme for research in third-level institutions as an important part of the Republic's funding programme, and he believes it has many hidden effects. "It is having a major impact on the health service. One of the things it will do is attract physicians with a strong interest in research."
He is optimistic that the Government-imposed "pause" in the programme's capital spending will be lifted rather than prolonged, which would send an important positive message to the world research community.
UCD last night opened the 2003 Conway Festival of Research with a plenary lecture by Sir Jack Baldwin of the University of Oxford. The festival, which includes speakers from the US and UK, will continue after the Tánaiste's opening of the centre