Brain-cell drugs project will stay in Auckland

By STACEY BODGER

A team of Auckland University scientists may have discovered drugs to combat the death of brain cells through injury, strokes and diseases such as Alzheimer's.

The scientists, led by Professor Peter Gluckman, have been offered more than $50 million by companies in Britain, Germany and the United States to take their research overseas.

But university vice-chancellor Dr John Hood said yesterday that the scientists would stay in Auckland because a company set up to commercialise the research had received $15 million in domestic and international funding.

At a function hosted by the company, NeuronZ, yesterday Prime Minister Helen Clark said it was fantastic that NZ had retained its commercial potential, which would place it at the leading edge of scientific endeavour.

Professor Gluckman, dean of the university's medical and health sciences faculty, and his team of 40 scientists are already well known for developing a brain rescue monitor, being tested in London, which is thought to detect brain damage in newborn babies.

They have now developed a series of neuronal rescue therapies - seven classes of drugs which Professor Gluckman says have the potential to cut the incidence of strokes more than 80 per cent, abolish brain lesions involved in multiple sclerosis and halt the loss of brain cells that contributes to Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases.

He hopes that clinical trials of the drugs on humans will be under way overseas within two years.

"[This is] the start of the next phase of what I truly believe is the chance for New Zealand to enter the biomedical knowledge economy," says Professor Gluckman.

"The research could have been perhaps a year further ahead if we had accepted the overseas offers - but it would have destroyed the team and I was determined that this country should reap the economic reward from this."

NeuronZ, established by the university in 1996 to fund the research, has secured $15 million in funding from Auckland UniServices - the commercial arm of the university - Oceania and Eastern Group, Macquarie Technology Fund and the New Zealand Seed Fund.

The money will fund further research on the therapies and pay for clinical tests and possibly the initial costs of exporting the drugs and technology.

A director of NeuronZ, United States fund adviser Jerry Balter, said New Zealand had missed out on significant growth opportunities by under-investing in research.

Mr Balter expected the company to employ up to 150 people within five years.

Dr Hood credited UniServices with securing the funding, through the establishment of the New Zealand Seed Fund.

He said that a project being undertaken within a research-led university was what the knowledge economy was all about.