|
From the Director
Visitors to The School
The JCSMR Open Day 2003, opened by world champion speed skier Michael
Milton, was a highlight of the year and attracted over 600 people, including
high school students from as far afield as Darwin, Adelaide and Hobart.
We also played host to 128, Year 11 students from all over Australia
as part of the National Youth Science Forum.
New JCSMR Building
A major continuing initiative is the planning and funding of a new building
for the JCSMR. We are delighted that funds to support the first phase
of the program are now guaranteed and ground will be broken in early
2004. Much staff time is spent in planning and design for the new building
and some disruptions accompany room re-allocations in the existing building
as staff are moved to allow demolition of the old workshop. These movements
have been handled efficiently and patiently by workshop and scientific
staff.
| Curtin
Medal for Excellence in Medical Research
The inaugural Curtin Medal for Excellence in Medical
Research was awarded to Nobel Laureate Professor Peter Doherty
by the Minister for Science, the Hon. Peter McGauran at the National
Portrait Gallery during the launch of the exhibition Australia
and the Nobel Prize. The exhibition was suggested by Dr Peter
Jeffrey from the School and he together with former Director Professor
David Curtis FRS assisted with documentary material on some of
the Nobel Prize winners. This provided an appropriate conclusion
to a year which started with a symposium celebrating the centenary
of the birth of one of our other Nobel Laureates Sir John Eccles. |
 |
Collaboration and research
The new building for the Australian Phenomics Facility
was begun in 2003 and is approaching completion. This major resource
for identifying genetic defects underlying major diseases will make
a notable contribution to Australia’s health and scientific
research infrastructure.
Initiatives like the new building and our association
with the ANU Medical School and the Australian Phenomics Facility
are expected to enhance the desirability of the School as a place
of choice to work and study. This year fourteen students graduated
with their PhDs.
Emeritus Professor Frank
Fenner
Professor Fenner continues to work in the School to
our great benefit. His principal activity in 2003 was the updating
of the history of the Australian Academy of Science for publication
in 2004, its jubilee year.
Professor Robert Blanden's
retirement
Professor Blanden retired after a long and distinguished
career in the School. The occasion was marked by a special Frank and
Bobbie Fenner conference on November 9 attended by many of Bob's colleagues
including Nobel Laureates Peter Doherty and Rolf Zinkernagel. Professor
Fenner gave the introductory address 'How Bob got to The John Curtin
School of Medical Research'.
Clinical trials
Two notable applications of
JCSMR research that progressed in 2003 were favourable results in
phase II clinical trials in terminal cancer patients treated with
PI-88 in the US and the commencement of trials in Australia of the
prime and boost HIV vaccine.
Research highlights
Immunopathology Group
Dr Bill Cowden’s group has challenged conventional
dogma by showing that in some autoimmune diseases, nitric oxide has
a down-regulating effect. Thus, in addition to having a localised tissue
damaging role in these diseases, it may, in contrast, actually slow
down or reverse the disease process. In the absence of nitric oxide
production by the immune system, some autoimmune diseases are actually
more severe and protracted than would otherwise be the case. This finding
implies that nitric oxide may 'feed-back' to signal the immune system
to reduce or halt its unwanted attack.
Diabetes/Transplantation
Immunobiology Laboratory
In research on experimental type 1 diabetes using transplantation
techniques, Dr Charmaine Simeonovic’s group has
found that targeting chemokine receptors, rather than individual chemokines,
may be useful for pancreatic islet tissue transplantation.
Cancer and Vascular Biology Group
Work in Professor Chris Parish’s
laboratory provides the experimental basis for a new approach to cancer
vaccination that is potentially less susceptible to immune evasion.
These studies also imply that eosinophils may play a previously unrecognised
role in tumour immunosurveillance.
Biomolecular Structure Laboratory
Studies on calcium receptors in muscle have allowed Dr Marco
Casarotto and colleagues to design small protein-like molecules
(peptides) that can regulate calcium levels in skeletal and heart muscle.
Therapies involving such designer molecules might ultimately be applicable
to a range of muscle-related diseases such as heart failure, malignant
hypothermia and muscular dystrophy.
Ubiquitin Laboratory
Ubiquitin-specific proteases (USPs) are enzymes that split
the protein ubiquitin from deleterious proteins marked for destruction
in cells. The USPs can slow or prevent destruction of proteins or control
their locations in cells by this ubiquitin removal. One USP (USP4) can
cause cancer when in excess. Dr Rohan Baker has found
that USP4 shuttles in and out of the nucleus in normal cells but becomes
trapped in the nucleus of cancer cells. His group is now examining how
this behaviour is linked to cancer.
Neuronal Signalling and Brain Modelling
Laboratory
The NMDA receptor is a protein in the brain that is thought
to be important for learning and memory. Work in the groups of Dr
Greg Stuart and Dr John Clements now shows
that activation of these receptors by voltage is time-dependent, fine-tuning
this receptors' ability to detect associative memories.
Visual Neuroscience Laboratory
Professor Trevor Lamb’s analysis of a wide variety
of published results on dark adaptation and regeneration of visual pigment
in the human eye has produced some interesting findings at a molecular
level. The time course of the process appears to be set by the rate
of recombination of two molecules, 11-cis retinal and opsin. One outcome
of this research is that it is now possible to obtain an estimate of
the relative concentration of the critical molecule 11-cis retinal in
the living eye through single non-invasive measurements.
Vaccine Immunology Group
Dr Scott Thomson has developed a scrambled antigen vaccine
approach, using consensus sequences of HIV, that might provide cross-strain
protection against infection. |
