Queensland’s best researchers honoured in QHMR Awards

The Queensland Health and Medical Research Awards held in Brisbane last Friday honoured a number of outstanding individuals for their work in areas including pain treatment, immunology, lymphoma and post transplant disorders.

Senior researcher of the year went to Dr Richard Clark from the Queensland Institute of Molecular Biology (IMB) for his work on developing a medication for chronic pain based on the venom of cone shells.

Molecules from cone shells have been shown to be very effective in the treatment of chronic pain, but they are of little use for drug development as they degrade in the body before reaching their target. Dr Clark’s work focuses on techniques for stabilising these cone shell molecules by combining them with other, more stable, molecules that don’t degrade.

In receiving his award Dr Clark stressed the need for new therapies, especially for the treatment of neuropathic pain. "Many drugs currently on the market for treating neuropathic and chronic pain can have serious side effects, and only work in about a third of patients," he said. "The need for new therapies is clear." Dr Clark is currently seeking funding to determine the safety of the molecule for use on humans. Chronic pain is said to affect around one in ten people at some stage in their life.

Also from the IMB, Dr Kate Schroder won Postdoctoral Researcher of the Year in recognition of her having completed the first comparison of the innate immune systems of humans and mice. Dr Schroder analysed the expression of innate immune genes in mice and humans, and found that the active genes differ by about 20 percent. It is hoped that this information, as well as identifying the exact genes that differ, will help inform and improve the work of immunologists using mice as a model for human diseases.

"Human-specific genes should be involved in protecting against human-specific pathogens, so this research will give us insights into how the immune system fights infectious diseases relevant to human health,” said Dr Matt Sweet, Dr Schroder's former supervisor. Dr Schroder has since left the IMB and currently works with renowned immunology expert Professor Jürg Tschopp's laboratory at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.

Dr Maher Gandhi, from the Queensland Institute of Medical Research ( QIMR ), was named clinical researcher of the year in recognition of his work studying the immunobiology of lymphoma, with a special interest in Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) associated lymphomas. EBV is a herpes virus that infects B cell and is implicated in several cancers.

“We hope that our research can lead to a way to combat this deadly virus,” Dr Gandhi said.

The World Health Organization ( WHO ) has recently added to its list of lymphomas a new provisional entity, termed “EBV-positive Diffuse Large B cell Lymphoma of the elderly”. This is an aggressive lymphoma with a dismal outcome, with knowledge and awareness of the disease quite limited. Dr Gandhi is also researching new antiviral strategies for this lymphoma.

The fourth award of the night was for postgraduate of year, which went to Kimberley Jones, also from the QIMR. for her work on T-cellsin post-transplant disorders.