Having one of our talented PhD students share their research with the international research community is amazing in itself but Aleksandra Adamska recently took it up a notch, bringing home the Best Oral Scientific Presentation Award from an international pharmacology conference in Singapore.

Aleksandra took to the stage at the ‘International Conference on Pharmacology: Advances in Translational Sciences and Drug Discovery’ to present on cancer research she is undertaking with her Curtin Health Innovation Research Institute (CHIRI) supervisor, Professor Marco Falasca.

A pharmaceutical biotechnology graduate from Wroclaw University in Poland Aleksandra is in her fourth year and close to completing her PhD with CHIRI. She is researching potential new targets to improve treatments for pancreatic cancer, which was the subject of her award-winning presentation. Read more…

 

It has been a busy couple of months for Curtin Health Innovation Research Institute (CHIRI) liver researcher Dr Ross Graham and his PhD student Clinton Kidman, who have returned from representing CHIRI at back-to-back international engagements and kindly shared these happy snaps of their travels.

First stop was attending the Eighth Congress of the International BioIron Society (IBIS) in Heidelberg, Germany. Both Ross and Clinton were grateful to receive travel grants to attend the five-day event, Ross’s was from the Biochemical Society UK and Clinton’s an IBIS Conference Bursary.

Together, our talented duo presented three posters on their CHIRI research investigating how iron regulates changes to fat metabolism, work they performed in collaboration with fellow CHIRI researchers Associate Professor Cyril Mamotte and Dr Mark Hackett and researchers from the universities of Western Australia, Newcastle and Sydney. Their research seeks to better understanding the underlying mechanisms of two age-related conditions – non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and iron overload orders – and the links between them. Read more…

You may already know Curtin Health Innovation Research Institute (CHIRI) Associate Professor Nina Tirnitz-Parker as the Head of our Liver Disease and Regeneration Laboratory and a current Homeward Bound #4 leadership program participant but here is something new – she has just been elected as a Director on the Board of the Gastroenterological Society of Australia (GESA).

Congratulations to Nina, who is the only biomedical researcher amongst clinicians on the Board and is looking forward to bringing her unique perspective to its operations during her two-year term from 2019-2021.

GESA is the Australian body representing patients, clinicians and scientists in the field of gastrointestinal diseases.

“I believe that research is an integral part of our society and that unmet clinical needs are best addressed when researchers and clinicians work closely together,” Nina said.

“By capitalising on each other’s strengths and expertise, we can drive the research towards a meaningful outcome for patients.” Read more…

A research team co-led by Curtin Health Innovation Research Institute’s (CHIRI) Professor Arunasalam ‘Dharma’ Dharmarajan has secured funding of $566,276 for three years from the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation, Victoria to define the role of hormones in ovarian cancer.

Working with Co-Chief Investigator Associate Professor Pradeep Tanwar from the University of Newcastle’s Gynaecology Oncology Research Group, the research team’s goal is to improve understanding of the genetics behind the disease.

Dharma said a number of known factors contribute to a woman’s risk of ovarian cancer but many women were not aware of them. Read more…

Friends and potential supporters of the Curtin Health Innovation Research Institute (CHIRI) recently stepped into our state-of-the-art lab facilities for the rare opportunity to spend a night as a CHIRI researcher.

The exclusive, hands-on lab tour and cocktail function provided a unique insight into the institute’s research into chronic diseases of ageing. It also provided the more than 70 guests with opportunities to learn more about how they can support the important work of CHIRI’s research scientists.

CHIRI Director John Mamo said it was great opportunity to welcome members of the community into CHIRI’s ‘home’ to see first-hand where the institute’s dedicated and passionate team of researchers spend their days looking for new prevention and treatment opportunities to improve the health of older Australians.

“We received lots of wonderful encouragement for our work and mission and indeed donations have already been realised,” he said. “I am very excited by the prospect of what we can achieve with the help and generosity of the Australian community.” Read more…

Want to get to know one of CHIRI’s PhD students a little better? It will only take a minute!

The Australasian Wound and Tissue Repair Society featured a ‘One Minute’ profile on CHIRI PhD student Zalitha Pieterse in its recent newsletter.

Zalitha, who is a member of the society, took the opportunity to talk about her research with CHIRI, where she works in our Associate Professor Pritinder Kaur’s lab studying the role of pericytes in skin regeneration and their effect on epithelial cancer progression.

Find out more about Zalitha – including her research, why she chose science, what she hopes to achieve in the next 12 months and even her favourite holiday destination – here https://buff.ly/31GHIc7.

Two Curtin Health Innovation Research Institute (CHIRI) researchers have packed their research and taken it to the world stage at conferences in Bosnia and Herzegovina and London this month.

Dr Hani Al-Salami has recently returned from giving a headliner presentation at the CMBEBIH 2019 International Conference on Medical and Biological Engineering in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Meanwhile, Professor Marco Falasca is preparing to present at the 4th International Symposium on Immunotherapy at the Royal Society in London on 24-25 May.

Given a full hour to speak, Hani took the opportunity to talk about CHIRI and share his future perspective on his research area of expertise: bio-nanotechnological advancement in drug delivery and pancreatic tissue engineering.

Hani’s team at CHIRI is committed to identifying new pharmaceutical therapies for diabetes and age-related diseases using novel bio-nanotechnologies and pharmaceutical formulation targeted-delivery systems. Read more…

The Curtin Health Innovation Research Institute (CHIRI) has a new expert in the burgeoning field of synthetic biology, who will be providing new tools to better understand diseases associated with ageing.

Fascinated with engineering and understanding mammalian gene expression, Professor Oliver Rackham’s research focuses on using synthetic biology – reprogramming the functions of molecules and cells using artificial DNA made in the lab – to develop new therapeutics to target age associated cancer, diseases characterised by loss of metabolic (energy) function, for example in heart failure, and diseases relevant to immune function, including antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Read more…

Three Curtin Health Innovation Research Institute (CHIRI) researchers involved in a pilot clinical trial are circling in on new ways to improve radiotherapy treatments for head and neck cancers.

Working in collaboration with researchers from Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital and Curtin University, their goal is to manipulate radiotherapy techniques used as the current primary treatment for these cancers to improve patient outcomes and reduce treatment failure rates.

The team is investigating a way of doing this by tracking circulating tumour cells (CTCs) and circulating cancer stem cells (CCSCs) in patients’ blood at various stages of disease progression and treatment.

“Our initial proof-of-principle study on healthy volunteers has been completed and the data looks promising, giving us the confidence in proceeding to patient studies,” lead researcher Professor Joshua Dass said.

“We are ready to progress our research through the next exciting phase and hopefully come up with some new ways to treat what are the seventh most common forms of cancer in Australia and the world.”

Read more…

Globetrotting Curtin Health Innovation Research Institute (CHIRI) PhD student Ahlima Roumane will go wherever her research journey takes her if it means becoming a better researcher and potentially helping people with some debilitating metabolic disorders.

So when the opportunity to pack her bags and head to Scotland for a year to continue work on an international research collaboration between CHIRI and the University of Aberdeen, off she went.

Ahlima will be based at the world-renowned Rowett Institute, where most of the current research is sponsored by the Scottish Government and aims to address some big issues of our time, including food inequalities, food security and obesity, and the sustainable development of Scotland’s food industry. Major programs of the institute’s food and health-related research are also funded by the European Union and research councils.

Ahlima’s research is part of a collaboration between the laboratories of CHIRI’s Professor Philip Newsholme, and Prof. Justin Rochford from the University of Aberdeen, which aims to find new therapeutic targets for a fatty tissue disorder called lipodystrophy.

Ahlima, who has been working on this collaborative project for seven months under her CHIRI supervisors Prof. Newsholme and Associate Prof. Cyril Mamotte, will now work under the supervision of their Scottish counterparts in the collaboration. Read more…