The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research

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Institute researchers awarded more than $3 million by ARC

 

Walter and Eliza Hall Institute researchers have been awarded more than $3 million by the Australian Research Council (ARC). The funding, announced yesterday, will further research into programmed cell death (apoptosis), cancer, immune cell structure and function, and infectious diseases including malaria, HIV and hepatitis.

Four researchers from the institute - Dr Justin Boddey, Dr Matthew Call, Dr Mark Chong, and Dr Grant Dewson -were awarded Queen Elizabeth II fellowships, each worth more than $600,000 over five years.

Dr Call, a joint laboratory head in the institute’s Structural Biology division, said he was excited and enthusiastic about receiving the fellowship. “I’ve just started in my first lab head position at the institute, and receiving the ARC fellowship is a great way to start my career here in Australia.”

Dr Call is studying cell surface receptors involved in the immune response. “Cell surface receptors direct the most important events in the immune response, however we don’t really know much about the membrane bound portion of the receptor or how it functions,” he said.

“It’s a ‘blind spot’ in our knowledge of immunological cell receptor function, and it is very difficult to study because the domain is integrated within the cell membrane. We are using structural biology and immunology to study how this portion of the receptor interacts with the external segment that binds molecules and the internal segment that activates internal cell signaling messages.”

Laboratory heads Dr Marc Pellegrini from the Infection and Immunity division and Dr Jose Villadangos from the Immunology division were also each awarded more than $300,000 over three years to extend their research into infectious disease and dendritic cells, respectively.

Infectious diseases specialist Dr Pellegrini said it was a delight to be awarded an ARC grant in the peer-reviewed process. “It’s incredibly reassuring to have your work recognised by your peers as fruitful and important,” Dr Pellegrini said.

He said the funding would be critical to continuing his research to find a cure for chronic infectious diseases such HIV, hepatitis B and C and tuberculosis.

“We are looking at trying to boost the body’s ability to clear these chronic infectious diseases which, for reasons that are not well understood, seem to overwhelm the immune system,” Dr Pellegrini said.

“Rather than targeting the disease itself, which tends to mutate to avoid or become immune to antiviral or antimicrobial drugs, we are looking at alternative ways to make the body’s defense system - particularly T cells - better able to manage the disease.

“In a sense, we are trying to create ‘super T cells’ by either giving them more artillery to fight the infection, or by simply boosting the troop numbers so that they can better fight these infections.”

QEII Fellowship grants ($610,000 over 5 years):

• Understanding how Plasmepsin V directs export of malaria virulence proteins to the host cell (Dr Justin Boddey)

• Intramembrane mechanics of immunoreceptor signalling (Dr Matthew Call)

• The role of non-coding RNAs in T cell development (Dr Mark Chong)

• Controlling apoptotic cell death in health and disease (Dr Grant Dewson)

Discovery project grants ($300,000+ over 3 years), awarded through the University of Melbourne:

• Evolution of immunoregulatory networks: preventing autoimmunity at the expense of perpetuating chronicity in persistent infections (Dr Marc Pellegrini)

• Expression and substrate recognition by MARCH ubiquitin ligases (Dr Jose Villadangos)

For further information
Penny Fannin
Strategic Communications Manager
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