Harry Perkins Institute receives $14.2m

The federal government has awarded eight grants valued at a combined $14.2 million to Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research to investigate new cancer and disease treatments.

The National Health and Medical Research Council funding would be used by the eight Western Australian scientists to further develop their research.

Harry Perkins Institute associate director and University of Western Australia researcher Professor Alistair Forrest has won an investigator grant valued at about $2.9 million.

The funding would be used over five years to explore new directions and innovative approaches to understand how cancer behaves and develop new treatments from this research.

Professor Forrest said his research team aimed to use new technologies to map cancer cells and the micro-environments influencing cancer cell behaviour.

“We aim to gain new insights into why some difficult to treat cancers, such as ovarian cancer, resist treatment,” Professor Forrest said.

“An investigator grant gives us the freedom to do that rather than being restricted to the scope of a specific research project.”

Harry Perkins Institute head of synthetic biology and Curtin University researcher Professor Oliver Rackham was also awarded an investigator grant valued at about $2.7 million to develop technologies for treating diseases resistant to current treatments.

Professor Rackham said his research vision was to harness the potential of synthetic biology to design new therapeutics for diseases which currently do not have treatments, including childhood cancers, metabolic disorders and neurological diseases.

“Sadly, there are many diseases like mitochondrial diseases and other childhood genetic diseases that are neglected because their treatments are often not considered profitable due to their cost to develop and the limited patient population,” Professor Rackham said.

“Synthetic biology offers great potential for developing new treatments for these types of diseases.”

UWA associate professor Pilar Blancafort has received a grant valued at about $2.9 million to research the way cancer cells spread and develop resistance to treatments.

Associate Professor Blancafort discovered the potential use of honeybee venom to kill breast cancer cells in 2020 in collaboration with former PhD student Ciara Duffy.

Her newly funded research is aimed to design targeted treatments to battle the cancer mechanism which activates triple negative breast cancer.

“These [treatments] will slow down or prevent cancer spread and make these aggressive breast cancers more sensitive to many other types of treatment,” Associate Professor Blancafort said.

Harry Perkins Institute associate professor Juliana Hamzah and her team has won $2.1 million to develop a drug to clear blocked arteries, while UWA epigeneticist Dr Olivier Clement has received a grant valued at about $1.1 million for his research investigating ways to mitigate cognitive decline caused by aging.

The other grants included about $1 million for Harry Perkins Institute director and cancer researcher Professor Peter Leedman to develop a new treatment for oral cancer, $887,020 for UWA researcher Dr Chuck Herring to explore human brain development and neurodevelopmental disease origins, and $478,988 for Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital renal specialist Dr Aron Chakera to develop a test to detect fungal infections and determine the best antibiotic to prescribe.