The Perlmutter Group

Courtney McDonald
Honours Student

I’m 21 years old and was born in Australia. I went to school in the Eastern suburbs of Melbourne before I came to Monash. I’m currently completing my honours year and hope to continue on with some form of research in the future.

In my spare time I like to pretend I’m a superhero and leap off tall buildings, jump out of planes, drive cars very fast and eat lots of junk food…

Development of new mimetics as MOG peptide antagonists

Myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein (MOG) has been implicated as one of the primary auto-antigens involved in the development of Multiple Sclerosis (MS). MS is a neurodegenerative disease that affects large numbers of people across the world. The cause of the disease is still largely unknown and so far the search for a cure or vaccine for this disease has come up short. Therefore the ultimate goal of our work is to develop an inhibitor of MS.

Previous work has found that an amino acid substitution at position 44 in the peptide (MOG 37-44A-52) gives the peptide the ability to reduce MOG induced EAE (mouse model for human MS).

Using this knowledge we are preparing mimetics of the peptide, hopefully resulting in a more ‘druggable’ peptide that could be a possible lead for a vaccine against MS.