US drug company to back Parkinson's research MELBOURNE researchers have won the backing of a US company to develop drugs to battle illnesses such as Parkinson's and motor neuron disease. The commercial partnership not only offers hope of extending the quality of life for more than 80,000 Australians, but is also expected to be a significant windfall for the University of Melbourne, which will receive royalty payments from sales of future treatments. The compounds they developed have been previously used for cancer imaging, but neurochemist Associate Professor Kevin Barnham, from the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, said they were also useful for neurodegenerative diseases. "The degenerative processes in these diseases ultimately means cell deaths, caused by changes to specific proteins in the brain," Associate Prof Barnham said. These compounds have the ability to inactivate some of the toxic pathways associated with these diseases. The research partnership with US company Procypa Therapeutics LLC also involves Dr Paul Donnelly, from the School of Chemistry, and Associate Professor Anthony White, from the university's Department of Pathology. The trio have been working with these compounds for eight years. Unlike other drugs for Parkinson's disease, which looked to improve symptoms by replacing dopamine in the brain, Associate Prof Barnham said their compound addressed the base cause of disease. Associate Prof Barnham said the company was backing the project because of their successful results in four animal models of Parkinson's disease and two of MND. Associate Prof Barnham said the commercial backing, which had taken several years of negotiations to finalise, would allow the research to bridge the medical research "valley of death," in which promising research projects never materialised because they could not get financial backing. The first human trials are expected to start within three years.