School attracts $19m in latest NHMRC Investigator Grants round

8 researchers announced as recipients - including ECR Dr Paula Miotto from Dept Anatomy & Physiology

How responses to outbreaks could be informed by evolutionary genomics, the role of muscle and genes to study and treat disease and vaccines and therapeutics for pandemics are just some of the projects being funded.

One of this year’s recipients, Dr Paula Miotto, Early Career Researcher in Prof Matt Watt’s lab in the Dept Anatomy & Physiology, is looking at new ways to reduce blood glucose to treat type 2 diabetes – a disease that affects 1.2 million nationally and costs Australians ~$15 billion a year.

In addition to insulin resistance, an under appreciated fact is that glucose effectiveness is impaired in type 2 diabetes. Dr. Miotto’s research program will look at extracellular vesicles from the liver and seek to uncover the regulation of glucose effectiveness.

“We are ultimately working to discover new aspects of metabolism that can be used to inform future therapies and treat type 2 diabetes,” she says.

Paula says being located in the heart of the biomedical precinct allows her to do cutting-edge research.

“It provides unprecedented access to world-class facilities, expertise, and clinical engagement – enabling the highest quality research.”

The NHMRC Investigator Grants scheme is designed to foster innovative and creative research and create opportunities for researchers to establish their own research programs.

A total of 8 researchers in SBS were successful. Please join us in congratulating all awardees  – and in acknowledging the time and effort of those that were unsuccessful in this round.

Department of Anatomy & Physiology
  • Assoc Prof Paul Gregorevic - Using muscle-directed gene delivery to study and treat disease
  • Dr Paula Miotto - Leveraging liver-derived extracellular vesicles to identify new therapies for type 2 diabetes
Department of Biochemistry & Pharmacology / Department of Microbiology & Immunology
  • Prof Jose Villadangos - Antigen Presentation and Adaptive Immunity
Department of Microbiology & Immunology
  • Prof Stephen Kent - Immunity, Vaccines and Therapeutics for pandemic viruses
  • Prof Scott Mueller - Neural regulation of immunity
  • Dr Sebastian Duchene - Evolutionary genomics to inform outbreak responses
  • Dr Maximilien Evrard - Deciphering the rules of T cell residency across intestinal compartments
  • Prof Axel Kallies - Targeting T cell differentiation and function to treat cancer and chronic disease

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