Victoria’s leading postgraduate health and medical researchers recognised

Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu and Minister for Health David Davis have announced that Dr Stefan Gehrig has been awarded the prestigious Premier’s Award for Health and Medical Research for 2012. The award, presented each year by the Victorian Government and the Australian Society for Medical Research during Medical Health Week, recognises and honours the achievements of Victoria’s early career health and medical researchers.

Dr Stefan Gehrig.

Baillieu said Dr Gehrig won the award from a highly competitive field of young Victorian researchers for his far-reaching investigation into Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD).

“Dr Gehrig discovered that increasing levels of a specific protein in muscles has the potential to treat DMD - a severe and progressive muscle-wasting disease,” Baillieu said.

“Around one in every 3500 boys worldwide is afflicted with DMD, for which there is currently no cure.”

Dr Gehrig found that increasing levels of ‘heat shock protein 72’ in the muscles of mice could help treat DMD.

Minister Davis presented Dr Gehrig with the coveted $16,000 prize at an award ceremony at Government House.

“Dr Gehrig discovered that increasing this protein in muscles improved the function of a pump responsible for controlling calcium levels, confirming it as a target for future therapeutic drugs for the disease,” Davis said.

“Dr Gehrig also discovered that administering the drug BGP-15 improved overall muscle function and increased the lifespan of mice.

“This is promising news for boys with DMD who at the moment are treated with corticosteroids, which come with significant side effects.

“We anticipate that these findings could serve as the basis for future clinical trials within the next five to 10 years.”

The impact and significance of Dr Gehrig’s work have been acknowledged internationally and his research was recently published in the research journal Nature.

The Department of Physiology, University of Melbourne, where Dr Gehrig conducted his research, received the $30,000 Jack and Robert Smorgon Families Award.

Andrew Blode, CEO of the Jack and Robert Smorgon Families Foundation, said the foundation was delighted to support the significant contribution made by Victorian institutions in the field of health and medical research.

“This year we congratulate the Department of Physiology, University of Melbourne. This small team of dedicated researchers has made a significant contribution for patients with DMD and their families, and we applaud them,” Blode said.

Dr Gehrig’s research was performed in collaboration with the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute, Deakin University and the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.

Commendations

Three other commendees were presented with $8000 each for their outstanding contribution in the field of health and medical research.

Michael Livingston

Mr Michael Livingston is public health researcher with the Turning Point Alcohol & Drug Centre whose investigations into the relationship between the density of alcohol outlets and people’s health and social welfare has helped to change alcohol policy in Victoria.

Livingston used his PhD to consider the effects that the liberalisation of alcohol policy in Victoria through the 1980s and 1990s had on the community. While it brought many positive social and economic benefits to the state, the policy also resulted in a set of unintended consequences.

Livingston looked particularly at the effect that increasing the density of alcohol outlets has had on neighbourhoods. He found that the more alcohol outlets there were in a neighbourhood, the more chance there was of assault, family violence, chronic disease and binge drinking among young adults.

These findings have had a major impact on alcohol policy in Victoria, leading to stricter controls for the approval of new bottle shops. The research has been used as critical evidence in liquor licensing hearings around Australia.

Today, Livingston is considered one of the world leaders in public health research around alcohol. He has consulted widely to local and state governments including the Victorian Department of Justice and the City of Stonnington,  won several awards and had 20 articles published in leading journals.

Dr Elena Tucker

Dr Elena Tucker is a medical health researcher with the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute whose use of gene technology offers new hope for people suffering from a potentially fatal genetic disease.

Mitochondria are present in every cell of the human body and are responsible for converting food into energy. Mitochondrial disease is a devastating genetic disease characterised by an inability to generate the energy required for normal bodily functions. In Australia, about one child every week is born with a mitochondrial illness and about half of them die. There is currently no targeted treatment or cure for this disease.

Dr Tucker focused her PhD to identify the genetic causes of mitochondrial diseases using next-generation technology to identify and unravel genes. As part of her study, she sequenced the DNA of 1000 mitochondrial genes in 44 people with mitochondrial disorders. She found about 25% of cases could be diagnosed straight away and expects that a further 25% will be diagnosed in the next few years as more genes are formally linked to the disorders.

Results from this study have the potential to allow researchers within the next few years to diagnose most children with suspected mitochondrial disease within a month using just a blood sample, instead of needing a muscle biopsy and taking months or years.

Dr Tucker’s research, which was carried out in collaboration with the Broad Institute of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, has been published in top journals and been selected as research highlights by Nature and Nature Reviews Genetics. Dr Tucker has received a number of awards including the Young Investigator Award from the Human Genetics Society of Australia.

Dr Sophie Valkenburg

Dr Sophie Valkenburg is a medical researcher whose investigations into T-cells have helped to explain the role they play in protecting people against influenza viruses. This raises enormous possibilities for the design of new universal vaccines.

Research into influenza viruses is crucial because epidemics cause significant illness and death despite widespread yearly vaccination programs and antiviral drugs. T-cells show great promise for use in a universal vaccine because of their role in preventing disease and ability to recognise different influenza viruses.

Dr Valkenburg concentrated her efforts on looking at how T-cells can target new viruses, such as the H1N1 2009 virus. She found that vaccinating elderly people was less effective than younger individuals as the immune system diminishes over time, suggesting that vaccinating younger people was a better approach to winning the war against influenza.

Dr Valkenburg’s work involved collaboration with researchers both locally and internationally. She is now working with a leading influenza research group at the University of Hong Kong as an NHMRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow on highly pathogenic Avian H5N1 influenza viruses. She will return to the Australian Animal Health Laboratory at CSIRO for further research on emerging infectious diseases.

She has received many awards during her PhD, presented at several international conferences and her research has been published in high-impact journals.