New scientific research which may help point the way for potential treatments for neuro-degenerative diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and motor neurone disease has been unveiled at the inaugural conference of Neuroscience Ireland.
More than 200 people working in the field of neuroscience attended the conference at University College Cork last week, where they heard of new research being carried out by teams in UCC, UCD, TCD, NUIG and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, among others.
Among the developments discussed at the conference was work from UCC neuroscience researchers Dr Yvonne Nolan, Suzanne Crotty and Dr Aideen Sullivan, which they say may have the potential to slow the development of Parkinson's disease.
Dr Nolan and her team conducted tests on a new drug which protects against the loss of neurons that promote dopamine.
Dopamine is a chemical messenger that carries signals between the brain's nerve cells and is partly responsible for control of motor function.
People with Parkinson's disease have a deficiency of dopamine and therefore gradually lose control of co-ordinated movement, said Dr Nolan, who conducted the tests for a Canadian-owned company called Vasogen Ireland.
Dr Nolan and her team have spent the past three years carrying out tests of the drug on laboratory rats.
The results, which have yet to be published, showed that the drug protects against the loss of dopamine neurons.
"It is preliminary work but the results are very positive. As an initial look at the beneficial effects, it's very effective, but it will be a long period, possibly years, to know definitively if it's effective in humans," she said.
"We're just about to publish a paper and we will assess our feedback on it, and it will then be up to Vasogen Ireland to decide where to go with the drug in terms of clinical trials - they may not decide to go ahead with it right now," she said.
Among the other research presented at the conference was work by Dr David Henshall of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland into the effects of prolonged epilepsy seizures on the brain.
Dr Henshall said approximately only one-third of the 35,000 or so people with epilepsy in Ireland suffered from seizures and of these only a small percentage suffered from prolonged seizures of more than five minutes.
"Most people who have epilepsy respond very well to current anti-epileptic drugs and can live very successfully without having seizures, but a proportion of epilepsy patients will continue to experience seizures throughout their lifetime," he said.
Dr Henshall and his team are focusing on the cumulative damage that may be caused to the brain after an accumulation of seizures.
They are looking at developing a drug which could prevent brain cells dying.
"We're studying a process called apopthosis that regulates cell death - it's a co-ordinated signalling process for cells to die off and we've been studying some of the gene pathways that co-ordinate the cell death process.
"If we are able to intervene and block that signalling process, we can stop the cells from dying following a prolonged seizure. We hope eventually it might lead to potential drugs that can be given to someone after a certain type of seizure," he said.