Structural biology wins big in Ramaciotti Awards

Headlining this year’s Ramaciotti Awards, held last night in Melbourne, was structural biology, that discipline that seeks to understand the molecular structure of the building blocks of life.

The Ramaciotti Medal for Excellence in Biomedical Research was awarded to Professor Michael Parker from Melbourne’s St Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research, who also receives a $50,000 grant.

Professor Parker’s career spans more than a quarter of a century, and his research has made major inroads into protein crystallography. The shapes discovered through this process have provided the basis for designing drugs to treat a range of serious diseases, including Alzheimer’s, leukaemia and other cancers, and infections.

“I’m thrilled that my work has been highlighted by the Ramaciotti Foundations and accept this award with great thanks,” said Professor Parker. “It is a wonderful thing to be recognised, not just as a protein crystallographer, but as a medical researcher who has been fortunate to make a real impact.”

The Ramaciotti Medal for Excellence in Biomedical Research recognises outstanding contribution to clinical or biomedical research or the way in which healthcare is delivered.

Past winners include Professors Sam Berkovic, Chris Parish, T. Jack Martin, Robert Baxter, Ian Frazer and Christopher Goodnow.

Meanwhile, the $1 million Ramaciotti Biomedical Research Award went to a joint research team led by Professors James Whisstock and Ian Smith from Monash University and Professor Mike Lawrence from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research.

The grant will go towards establishing a new state-of-the-art structural cryo-electron microscopy research centre, which will be named The Clive and Vera Ramaciotti Centre for Structural Cryo-Electron Microscopy.

According to Professor Whisstock, the use of cryo-EM in the exploration of protein function and dysfunction has made leaps and bounds over the past few years.

“All diseases have complex cascades of interacting proteins,” he said. “To develop a drug to block that interaction, you first need to understand how it works – that’s the essence of structural biology and the key use of Cryo-EM, which allows researchers to create powerful images of nature’s tiny machines.”

The Ramaciotti Biomedical Research Award is one of the annual awards made by the Ramaciotti Foundations, thanks to a single bequest made in 1970. This year the Foundations granted over $2.6 million to biomedical research in Australia, the largest distribution in their history.

Ramaciotti Establishment and Equipment grants of up to $75,000 were also awarded to 22 recipients working across multiple fields in biomedical research. The full list can be found on the Ramaciotti website.