Bionomics signs with US ally

Adelaide biotechnology company Bionomics (ASX:BNO, US OTC:BMICY) has found a friendly American bloodhound to help it track down new genes involved in epilepsy -- the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

Researchers at the Brigham, a teaching hospital of the Harvard Medical School, will search for new epilepsy genes in clinical samples from epilepsy patients in Bionomics' research program.

Bionomics' CEO and MD, Dr Deborah Rathjen, said the collaboration -- initiated by the Brigham -- added a highly regarded US research institution to company's network of collaborators in epilepsy gene discovery and epilepsy drug development.

The company currently has collaborative arrangements with Prof Sam Bercovic's Epilepsy Research Centre at the Austin and Repatriation Hospital, Dr Steve Petrou at the Howard Florey Institute for Experimental Medicine, and Prof Grant Sutherland's gene-hunting team at the Women's and Children's Hospital (WCH) in Adelaide.

Bionomics already has 19 different candidate genes in its portfolio, more than half dozen with confirmed roles in epilepsy, and has lodged patents for the world's first authentic mouse model of a human epilepsy.

Coming on the heels of Petrou's US$1.7 million research grant from the National Institutes of Health this month, the new US research collaboration attests to Bionomics progress towards establishing itself as an international 'Epilepsy, Inc'.

Rathjen said the new collaboration reflected strengthening US support for Bionomics' epilepsy research programs.

Francis Placanica, Bionomics' vice-president of business development, said the Brigham was investigating a US family with epilepsy, and had identified a marker gene adjacent to a mutant gene already identified by Bionomics researchers as having a role in epilepsy.

It had approached Bercovic and John Mulley, of the WCH team, for permission to compare its samples with Bionomics' samples from the Australian pedigrees.

Placanica said the collaboration would give the Boston researchers access to Bionomics' samples from other families with inherited epilepsies, but Bionomics will retain the rights to patent any new discoveries that emerge from the collaboration.

Bionomics already has information on more than 2000 epilepsy patients on a database, and Placanica said the company was now beginning to make a greater effort to identify genes involved in sporadic epilepsies (epilepsies with no clear pattern of inheritance).

An international classification defines 24 different epilepsy sub-types, and so far, 10 genes have been definitively associated with these subtypes -- all but one of them involving mutant ion channels in brain tissue.