Associate Professor Faith Kwa leads the Drug Discovery for Chronic Diseases Laboratory at Swinburne University of Technology.
Her research focuses on finding new treatments for Friedreich ataxia, a rare inherited genetic condition that currently has no cure.
Friedreich ataxia affects around 260 people in Australia and can have devastating consequences.
The next step for Associate Professor Kwa’s team is to secure funding for a clinical trial.
The trial would test sulforaphane in patients and determine the most effective doses for treating the condition. This critical clinical study could demonstrate that a compound derived from a common vegetable might help tackle one of the world’s rarest and most challenging diseases – showing that groundbreaking medical discoveries can begin in the most unexpected places.
Crucially, SF can cross the blood–brain barrier, an advantage lacking in many drugs under investigation for neurodegenerative diseases like Friedreich ataxia (FRDA). FRDA is an inherited, incurable and debilitating condition caused by low levels of a protein known as frataxin.
Our laboratory showed that clinically relevant doses of SF not only improve survival of spinal cord cells generated from stem cells taken from FRDA individuals but also increase frataxin levels.
At approximately $5000 per patient per year, SF is more affordable than the only approved treatment, which costs hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. Sulforaphane exemplifies a future therapy that is sustainable, safe, and accessible to people.
