Research News

Building a smarter therapy for MND

Published: 11 December 2025

At The Florey, part of the University of Melbourne, Dr Azin Amin is developing novel, rationally designed peptide therapeutics aimed at protecting motor neurons and reaching the brain’s most guarded regions.

Azin joined the MND Laboratory in 2017 under the guidance of Associate Professor Fazel Shabanpoor, an expert in peptide and oligonucleotide therapeutics, Professor Brad Turner, a leading authority in MND and neurodegeneration, and Dr Nirma Perera, an autophagy expert.

Dr Azin Amin, The Florey, University of Melbourne

It was during this time that she first discovered her passion for MND research. Years on, she continues this work in close collaboration with A/Prof Shabanpoor, whose specialist expertise and supportive mentorship provide ongoing leadership on her peptide development program.

Together, they are engineering peptides that are more selective, more stable, and able to cross the blood–brain barrier, opening new possibilities for treating neurodegenerative diseases.

Their research targets autophagy, the cell’s internal recycling and cleanup system, which is impaired in MND. By boosting this pathway with custom-designed, blood–brain barrier– penetrant peptides, Azin aims to reduce the toxic protein buildup that contributes to motor neuron degeneration.

Rather than a single cure, the ambition is a targeted, disease-modifying therapy that could form part of future combination treatments to extend both function and quality of life.

Azin says funding from MND Australia, through the Bill Gole Postdoctoral Fellowship, has enabled her to pursue innovative therapeutic strategies that may not otherwise have been explored, peptide candidates that are uniquely designed and developed within the lab and represent a fresh direction in the search for safer, more adaptable drugs. 

Grounding the work, Azin regularly meets people living with MND and their carers through lab visits and community events. Those experiences bring purpose and urgency: visitors often leave more hopeful, and the researchers more driven to deliver tangible progress. 

The next phase involves AI-guided optimisation of peptide structure and function, followed by preclinical evaluation of the most promising candidates.

It is careful, cumulative work, reflecting a modern shift in MND research toward precisely targeted therapies that can advance from laboratory discovery to clinical impact.

Through MND Australia’s support, Azin and her colleagues are expanding what targeted treatment for MND could look like, step by step, molecule by molecule, keeping hope firmly grounded in science.

Read more stories about life with MND and the research to develop new treatments in the latest edition of Momentum.