Anti-Amyloid Drug Discovery
Amyloid fibres are implicated in many disorders including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's,
Diabetes and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. We conduct Research and Development activities in areas linked to the Treatment and Diagnosis of Amyloid associated
disorders.
Dr Nathaniel Milton has led our research in this area since September 1996 and is currently a Senior Lecturer in Human
Physiology, based in the Department of Human & Health Sciences, Faculty of Science & Technology,
University of Westminster. Dr Milton is also the founder and research director of NeuroDelta Ltd, who carry out commercial research using established bioinformatic screening techniques in the area of protein-protein interactions.
Our research has focused on endogenous amyloid-binding compounds. The binding of the Alzheimer's associated amyloid-ß peptide and fibrils to catalase has been characterized
by our group. We have recently shown that products of the KiSS-1 metastasis-suppressor
gene, the Kisspeptin (Milton et al 2012) and Kissorphin (Milton 2012) peptides, specifically bind amyloid-ß, amylin plus prion protein
peptides and are neuroprotective in vitro. The latest research on endogenous
Kisspeptin as an Alzheimer's neuroprotective compound has been presented at the Alzheimer's
Research UK 2013 conference (Chilumuri 2013). The co-localization of Kisspeptin with amyloid-ß deposits in the pons region of Alzheimer's brain has recently been demonstrated (Chilumuri et al 2013).
Recently our group has identified fibril formation conditions
for the non-amyloidogenic rat amylin peptide (Milton & Harris 2013) which can be used to screen for novel amyloid-binding compounds.
