BioFirst lures researchers

NSW’s BioFirst awards have attracted two top overseas researchers to the state, in the first of this year’s appointments for overseas experts.

Assistant Professor Izuru Matsumoto, from the Fukushim Medical University School of Medicine in Japan, will be joining the University of Sydney to develop a unique brain bank and donor program that’s dedicated to schizophrenia and alcohol related brain damage.

Associate Professor Shane Grey from the Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA, will move to the Garvan Institute to investigate genetically engineered therapies for the treatement of Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes.

Both awardees will be funded by the NSW government to the tune of $110,000 a year, to supplement the researchers’ salaries. The BioFirst Award has a budget of $6 million over five years.

Science and Medical Research Minister Frank Sartor described the awards as NSW’s effort to “turn around the brain drain and make it a brain gain”.

“The Government understands that our best and brightest scientists will be lured abroad by the prospect of working on the international stage: we want them to come back,” he said.

Matsumoto said he was delighted at the award, and was looking forward to the move.

“The brain bank at the University of Sydney is the only one of its type in Australia focusing specifically on schizophrenia and the damage that alcohol causes to the brain,” he said. “This funding will accelerate our search for treatments for these diseases,” he added.