Collaboration bridges the gap

As part of the announcement of their new Asia Pacific Innovation Centre, Johnson & Johnson - parent company of Janssen - will facilitate new collaborations with Australian university researchers.

One collaboration is with parasitologist Professor Alex Loukas at James Cook University in Cairns in which Janssen will provide financial support to progress work on a protein produced by hookworms that shows promise as a treatment for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, such as inflammatory bowel disease, Crohn’s disease and asthma.

“It’s very exciting for us to have a big pharma like Janssen jump in at what is a very early stage research,” said Loukas, adding that he pitched their work to Janssen at the AusBiotech national conference last year. “This stage of research - after early discovery work but before clinical trials - can be hard to find funding for. The Asia Pacific Innovation Centre is a welcome development for it bridges that gap.”

The relatively innocuous parasitic hookworm lives in the small bowel and releases a secretion with anti-inflammatory properties that help it go unnoticed by the human immune system.

“Having a few hookworms can actually be beneficial,” said Loukas. “They can protect people against autoimmune diseases.”

After exploring the active components of the hookworm secretion, one protein became the focus of Loukas’s work.

“We identified a protein, synthesised it and showed that it had protective properties in mice models for colitis and experimentally induced asthma,” said Loukas.

The protein drives the expansion of regulatory T cells, the ‘peacekeepers’ of the immune system that reduce or balance the inflammatory response.

Further developing this protein is the focus of the collaboration with Janssen and over the next year Loukas will develop a portfolio of preclinical data, such as how best to synthesise the protein and better understanding its mechanism of action.

The Asia Pacific Innovation Centre was launched at the 2014 AusBiotech national conference. Based in Shanghai, it will be headed by J&J executive Dong Wu and will include satellite offices in Australia, Singapore and Japan