Neuroinflammatory Targets in CNS Drug Discovery

Irrespective of the phenotype, e.g. Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Parkinson’s disease (PD) or schizophrenia, the most consistent finding in brain diseases is pronounced changes in the functional state of microglia – the cells responsible for immune defence in the CNS. The translocator protein (TSPO) and the purinergic P2X7 receptor are overexpressed in microglia and are known to modulate their function. Targeting these proteins through the discovery of novel molecules and PET imaging promises to provide a new strategy for treatment of brain disease.

Short Bio- Professor Michael Kassiou (Professor of Medicinal Chemistry, Associate Dean Research and Innovation (Faculty of Health Sciences), University of Sydney)

Michael received his PhD 1992 from the University of NSW. Following this he took up a position as research scientist within the Biomedicine and Health Program at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO). In 1993 he was appointed as a visiting scientist at the CEA-Service Hospitalier Frédéric Joliot Life Sciences group in France and shortly after that he took up a postdoctoral position at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutes in Baltimore USA. In 1996 he was awarded a Fogerty Fellowship that saw him take up a position at the NIH National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) USA. He then moved back to Sydney to the Department of PET and Nuclear Medicine at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital as a Principal Hospital Scientist and in 2006 took up a position at the University of Sydney in which he is currently Professor of Medicinal Chemistry. He is a Fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute and the Asian Federation of Medicinal Chemistry and current chair of the Medicinal Chemistry & Chemical Biology Division of RACI.