Bipolar disorder affects around one million Australians and is one of the leading causes of disability worldwide.
Lithium has been the standard treatment for decades, but it doesn’t work for everyone – providing little to no benefit for more than 40% of people with the disorder.
For many, that means years of trialling medications that fail to manage symptoms, taking a significant toll on their health, relationships and quality of life.
Finding better treatment options is essential to helping more people receive effective care.
Faster pathways to better treatments
Rather than starting from scratch, the team is investigating if medication already approved for other conditions could also treat bipolar disorder.
The team combines data-driven analysis and laboratory science to identify existing drugs that could be repurposed for bipolar disorder, while investigating the biological reasons behind why some people don’t respond to lithium.
Dr Trang Truong, a bioinformatician in the team, leads the data-driven analysis behind this work. Using large genetic and biological datasets, Dr Truong and the team can pinpoint approved medications that may also benefit people with bipolar disorder.
‘Because these drugs have already been through safety testing, promising candidates can reach patients much faster than newly developed medicines,’ says Dr Truong.
This approach identified the heart medication trimetazidine as a potential treatment for bipolar depression.
Understanding lithium
In parallel, the team is investigating the biological reasons behind lithium resistance.
By using brain cells generated from patients’ own blood-derived stem cells, researchers can study lithium response in the laboratory and identify the cellular pathways that distinguish responders from non-responders, without putting patients through additional invasive testing.
The research is revealing important differences in the way cells from lithium non-responders handle certain lipid molecules, the fatty substances that make up cell membranes and play a critical role in how signals are passed between cells.
Disruptions in these pathways appear to interfere with how lithium is taken up and used by the cell, inhibiting its effect.
This allows researchers to focus on existing medications that may be able to correct those specific processes, offering a more targeted approach than screening the entire drug landscape.
Where next?
The team is seeking funding to move the most promising drug candidates into early-stage laboratory testing.
They’re also collaborating with the Deakin Applied Artificial Intelligence Initiative (A2I2) to integrate artificial intelligence into the drug discovery process, scaling this approach across both bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, and accelerating the pathway from discovery to improved patient care.
This article was originally published in our 2025 Impact Report. Explore the full report.
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