In a major boost for health research, 22 UQ researchers and teams have secured $29 million from the National Health and Medical Research Council across the Ideas grants and Postgraduate Scholarships.
This funding supports early and mid-career researchers who are leading innovative and creative projects across health and medical fields from discovery to implementation, from breast cancer vaccines to tuberculosis treatments.
NHMRC Ideas Grants recipients:
Dr Matilde Balbi – test if induced brain rhythms can improve outcomes after stroke by clearing harmful waste, aiming to discover new ways to protect the brain and improve recovery.
Dr Carlie Cullen – investigate whether improper brain insulation during development disrupts brain function and contributes to neurodevelopmental disorders like ADHD and autism.
Professor Luke Guddat – create a new type of antibiotic that targets an enzyme essential for microbes but absent in humans, offering safer treatments for infections like tuberculosis and candida.
Professor John Hooper – test a new approach to detect breast cancer that targets a specific receptor to deliver radioactive ‘payloads’ to make breast cancer cells identifiable on PET scans.
Professor Kiarash Khosrotehrani – uncover why damaged cells outcompete healthy ones, paving the way for new therapies that could stop skin cancer before it starts.
Dr Christopher McMillan – formulate a new RNA medicine platform that works longer, needs smaller doses, and can be made quickly and affordably to fight diseases and respond to pandemics.
Dr Christian Nefzger – examine how ageing increases the risk and severity of fatty liver disease and develop new treatments using drugs and RNA technology.
Professor Michael Piper – create a lab model of Malan syndrome, a rare disorder causing overgrowth and intellectual disability, to uncover its cause and explore ways to reduce the impact on patients’ lives.
Professor Avril Robertson – design new drugs that block a venom enzyme to treat dangerous recluse spider bites, which currently have no effective therapy.
Professor Mark Schembri – understand how a new drug-resistant E. coli strain causes urinary tract infections and sepsis, to help fight the growing global threat of antibiotic resistance.
Professor H. Peter Soyer – use 3D body photography, AI and genomics to pinpoint high-risk skin areas, helping doctors detect melanoma earlier and save lives.
Professor Matt Sweet – study how immune cells turn off harmful inflammation and explore ways to use this process to create new anti-inflammatory treatments.
Professor Stewart Trost – develop a classification system capturing data on children’s screen use to determine the benefits and harms to their health.
Associate Professor Susannah Tye – develop a new deep brain stimulation system that adjusts in real time to the brain’s needs, reducing side effects and improving treatment for conditions like Parkinson’s disease.
Professor Brandon Wainwright – develop an mRNA vaccine to improve outcomes for children with brain cancer.
Professor Daniel Watterson – uncover how yellow fever vaccine mutations affect virus behaviour and use these insights to design next-generation vaccines and antibody therapies for flaviviruses like dengue.
Associate Professor Timothy Wells – learn more about a ‘superbug’ bacteria that is outsmarting antibiotics to improve outcomes against drug-resistant infections.
Professor Nick West – investigate how tuberculosis bacteria use special systems to survive, and whether disrupting these systems can make them easier to treat or prevent infection altogether.
Dr Sarah Withey – grow tiny livers and brains to enable testing of treatments to tackle Ataxia Telangiectasia, a devastating childhood disease, that restore a crucial protein to ease symptoms and give affected children a better quality of life.
Associate Professor Steven Zuryn – two separate projects will investigate how mitochondrial DNA mutations spread within cells and how certain environmental bacteria can reduce mutations, uncovering new strategies to prevent and treat mitochondria-related diseases.
NHMRC Postgraduate Scholarships recipients:
Dr Douglas Drak – test an optimised electronic frailty index to estimate in-hospital improvements in health outcomes and expenditure.
Emilia Janca – co-lead a model which improves the mental health and wellbeing of people released from prison, informed by cultural and lived experiences.
