This year’s 40under40 First Amongst Equals winner, Lyle Palmer, has dedicated his exceptional career to the study of genetics to improve human health.
This year’s 40under40 First Amongst Equals winner, Lyle Palmer, has dedicated his exceptional career to the study of genetics to improve human health.
Professor Palmer has taught at prestigious institutions around the world, including Harvard and Oxford, but returned to Western Australia in 2003 to take up a position at the University of Western Australia medical school as the foundation chair in genetic epidemiology.
At just 37 years of age Professor Palmer is the youngest scientist to be appointed to a chair at the medical school, and the initiator and director of the largest medical research informatics project in Australia’s history, the Western Australian Genetic Epidemiology Resource.
“We are essentially trying to determine the genetic and environ-mental factors that cause disease in humans,” Professor Palmer said.
“We are in the middle of a genomics revolution. It is one of the fastest aggregating areas of human knowledge, and we are producing more information about the human genome than any other area of science.
“We need to work out how to apply this knowledge to help people, because if we understand the genetic basis of a disease, we can understand what causes it.
“Most chronic diseases like obesity, cardio vascular disease, cancer and diabetes are the reason we can’t afford our own health care system.”
Professor Palmer said that, with the human genome only fully mapped in 2003, medical research was at the beginning of its ability to understand genetic diseases.
And WA is one of the best places in the world to undertake this sort of research, he says.
State governments have compiled an anonymous population-based health registry during the past 30 years, something unique in the world and which Professor Palmer said was a truly exceptional resource.
“We essentially have 30 years’ worth of the most complete medical research data, which helps to make Western Australia a world leader in epidemiological research,” he said.
“My job is to build on that and make it the best in the world in genetic research.
“We are heading towards a WA genome project which will involve going to everyone in WA and asking for a research sample and linking that to the medical research data we have.
“If we could do that, we could have a huge resource – it would be like the Busselton Population Study, which is recognised around the world, on a much larger scale.”
Professor Palmer said he was aiming to undertake a pilot project in the next two years with between 20,000 and 30,000 people, and then complete a statewide project at a cost up to $40 million.
“If we don’t do this in the next five years it won’t be worth doing. Australia isn’t going to be known for sending probes to Mars, building warships or particle accelerators, but this genome project would mean we had the best genetic research tool in the world, and every geneticist in the world would want to come here,” he said.
Professor Palmer said the skills base available in WA was excellent, with the top students he taught in Australia as accomplished as those at Oxford and Harvard.
“WA really produces world-class people; the difficult thing is keeping them here,” Professor Palmer said.
“We want young Australians to feel that they don’t have to go overseas, and the opportunity to be able to build something which could help keep them here is part of the reason why I came back to WA.
“Australia has been very good to my wife and I, and we always intended to come back and give something back to the country that has given us so much.”
