Leaders in research funding

The University of Sydney, Faculty of Medicine has again proved its excellence in research by securing competitive funding.

The University of Sydney has been successful in securing more than $22 million in funding in the 2005 round of NHMRC Program Grant and Enabling Grant awards, around a fifth of the total awarded nationally ($101 million) and more than any other university in the country and much of this has gone to projects led by members of the Faculty of Medicine.

Professor Rick Kefford from the Discipline of Medicine at Westmead Hospital and colleagues from the Sydney Melanoma Unit have been granted nearly $8m to investigate the molecular determinants of risk, progression and treatment response in melanoma.

The Sydney Melanoma Unit is the largest clinical service in the world to focus its efforts on the problem of melanoma. Its accumulated experience and data about the disease have already had a major impact on the course of diagnostic and clinical research into melanoma, and this new research grant will only serve to strengthen its position as a world leader in this field.

Professor Les Irwig and colleagues in the School of Public Health have been granted over $6m to study the under-researched area of medical tests. Should a particular test be done or not, when should it be done, how, and which test is best? This is a continuation of a previous Program Grant.

Professor John Simes of the NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre has been granted over $1m to develop a national resource which will provide resources in clinical trials expertise and web-based trials systems to enable investigator-initiated clinical trials of public good.

The Faculty of Medicine at the University of Sydney has also taken the lion’s share of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research funding.

Professor Jonathan Craig has secured over $2m over 5 years to conduct a long term study of the effects of the environment on Aboriginal Resilience and Child Health.

In another success for the Sydney Melanoma Unit, Associate Professor Graham Mann and others have teamed with Westmead Millennium Institute and have been granted $3.75 m over 5 years by the NSW Cancer Institute Program for Excellence in Translational Research. This collaborative endeavour will attempt to discover how gene and protein profiling in melanoma can be used to assist patient care.

Three researchers from the Kolling Institute have also been recognised by the NSW Cancer Institute by being awarded Cancer Institute Fellowships. All have been granted just over $0.5m.

Dr Sue Firth is to investigate regulators of growth in breast cancer cells, Dr Janet Martin will look at insulin-like growth factor binding proteins as growth factors in cancer and Dr Carolyn Scott will examine the mechanisms of action of a growth suppressing protein.