Ms. Isoherranen explained that 1% of the population suffers from epilepsy, a central nervous system (CNS) disorder that can cause violent seizures. As a result, people suffering from epilepsy take medication throughout their entire life to prevent seizures. Though several medicines have been developed to treat epilepsy, they are not effective on more than 30% of epilepsy patients and cause side effects.
David H. Eisenberg Professor of Pharmacy Meir Bialer, who is supervising Ms. Isoherranen's work together with Pharmaceutical Chemistry Prof. Boris Yagen, said that they hope to sign a contract with a pharmaceutical company that will allow them to begin clinical trials on the new medication in the next few years. So far the medication has been successfully tested on laboratory animals.
Ms. Isoherranen, Prof. Bialer, and Prof. Yagen, whose areas of expertise include developing antiepileptic and CNS drugs, spent the past four years working on developing an antiepileptic drug that would be more effective and not cause the side effects common to existing antiepileptic drugs.
Ms. Isoherranen explained that valproic acid is one of the most common medicines used to treat epilepsy and is also popular for treating migraine headaches, chronic pain, and manic depression. However, if a woman takes valproic acid while she is pregnant, it increases the chance of a birth defect by 2.5. It also can cause liver problems and weight gain.
Ms. Isoherranen combined valproic acid with taurine, a substance found in the brain that helps to control epilepsy. The end product is more potent than valproic acid and appa
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Contact: Heidi J. Gleit
heidig@savion.cc.huji.ac.il
972-6-445-4593
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
6-Jun-2002