Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a devastating disease that impacts so many families in Australia. It is our duty as researchers to constantly push the boundaries for developing innovative drug treatments to provide better treatment options for individuals living with MS. I believe we will be able to achieve this by working together collaboratively across multiple scientific disciplines.

Novel disease-modifying therapies that continue to challenge and improve the course of MS disease progression is particularly exciting and provides more treatment options for clinicians that ultimately translate to improved patient outcomes.

My research aims to discover novel small molecules that block the activity of a membrane protein called GPR17 which has been implicated in the oligodendroglial differentiation and maturation. I am particularly interested in novel receptor targets that can be pharmacologically modulated to promote myelination, as a therapeutic strategy for myelin repair in MS.

Novel small molecules for GPR17 are still lacking and more work is required to discover early-stage hits for this target which holds promise in promoting myelination in MS. Discovery of novel hits will provide an important starting point for drug discovery teams to optimise the pharmacological activity and improve the drug-likeness of the molecules, with the goal of generating lead candidates. Advanced lead molecules can then be progressed for further testing in laboratory models of MS and if successful, holds promise for future testing in human clinical trials involving MS patients.

I enjoy posing interesting scientific questions that challenge the status quo and subsequently working towards discovering the unknown - something that I find extremely rewarding and continues to motivate me in the lab. Of course, working in the lab is challenging as experiments may not work perfectly every time!