Professor Heath Ecroyd – a UOW Big Ideas Festival speaker

‘Harnessing stress to fight neurodegenerative diseases’
Professor Heath Ecroyd’s big idea is to develop a drug to treat debilitating neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease (PD) and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), a form of Motor Neurone Disease. The financial, emotional and social cost of these diseases to our community is enormous. Two people are diagnosed with ALS and thirty two with PD each day in Australia. Debilitating, progressive and incurable; that is the devastating prognosis currently faced by those diagnosed with these diseases. The new drugs developed by Professor Ecroyd will target a key pathway that normally plays a vital role in protecting cells from the stress caused by changes in their environment. Professor Ecroyd intends to use drugs to boost this pathway and, in doing so, inhibit the molecular processes that underpin the onset and progression of these neurodegenerative diseases.

Further Information: https://www.uow.edu.au/research-and-innovation/news-media-and-events/research-and-innovation-events/bigideas/