Gene therapy offers hope for epileptics

By AINSLEY THOMSON

Gene therapy developed at Auckland University is providing hope for people suffering from a drug-resistant form of epilepsy.

PhD student En-Ju Deborah Lin is investigating the effects of a therapeutic gene transfer to help treat and reduce seizures in people suffering from temporal lobe epilepsy.

Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological diseases, with 1 to 3 per cent of the population - 30,000 people in New Zealand - affected by it.

Temporal lobe epilepsy is common in adults and a third of those with the disease do not respond to drug therapy despite the number of epileptic drugs developed.

"Epileptic seizures inhibit the quality of daily life.

"I'm looking at the cause of seizures and how they can be addressed," Ms Lin said.

This year she conducted a pilot study using laboratory models under the supervision of Professor Matthew During and Dr Debbie Young.

The results have been promising and have been published in the European Journal of Neuroscience and the Journal of Neuroscience.

Ms Lin said they were putting together an application to conduct a clinical trial, which will take place in the United States and if approved it would begin in the the next two to three years.

"We would like to think this offers some hope and helps people with this drug-resistant epilepsy."

Although some 1000 clinical protocols using gene transfer have been presented, few have been for neurological diseases and none has focused on epilepsy.