Ido Aharoni & Illana Gozes: the new frontier of neuroscience, diagnosis and drug development

Professor (Emerita) Illana Gozes is the Director of the Elton Laboratory for Molecular Neuroendocrinology at the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences at TAU. Here she discusses with host Ido Aharoni her work, in particular, her scientific breakthroughs spanning decades of cutting edge innovative scientific research. In short, Professor Gozes discovered a new protein to science, she named it activity-dependent neuroprotective protein (ADNP). ADNP is essential for brain formation and when mutated it causes the ADNP syndrome, within the autism spectrum disorders. Furthermore, she discovered that it is mutated in Alzheimer’s disease brains paralleling the progression of disease pathology. With ADNP playing such crucial roles, the Gozes research team derived a small brain protective fragment of it and named this fragment NAP (investigational drug davunetide) toward clinical development. Analyzing clinical trial results, she showed that davunetide protects against brain degeneration in women suffering from the intractable disease, progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), sharing core pathology with Alzheimer’s disease. Davunetide is now in clinical development by Exonavis Therapeutics Ltd (where Prof. Gozes serves as Vice President for Drug Development). Amazingly, she never rests on her laurels. One of her other scientific breakthroughs, stemming from her discovery of ADNP linkage with stress conditions (a risk for Alzheimer’s disease), that in turn is paralleled by changes in the body’s bacterial flora have now progressed to studies on trauma. Thus, in combat shock victims, she and her colleagues identified the presence of certain bacteria in saliva paralleling post-trauma among veterans. The findings of this groundbreaking research point to a typical picture of bacteria in saliva that appears in veterans who suffered from combat reactions, and who now suffer from post-trauma. Together, the results of the studies pave the way for patient stratification, understanding nature versus nurture and the development of personalized sex-dependent therapeutics.