Eighteen Greek Australian medical and scientific researchers have been given more than $14 million in combined grants to continue their research.
In the hugely competitive selection process, 848 new grants were approved on October 17 by the National Health and Medical Research Council, covering a combined total of $580 million of funding.
Topics including thalassemia, osteoporosis, lung disease, obesity, genetics, tuberculosis, cancer and drug abuse were part of the research proposals approved for the Greek Australian grant recipients.
Most of the grants are disbursed over a number of years, and give researchers the peace of mind that their funding won’t be running out anytime soon.
Hopes for advances in treatment and eventually a cure for some medial conditions is why the grant program exists, funding some of the world’s leading medical studies.
One of the lucky recipients, associate professor Nicholas Lintzeris, is thrilled that his research in cannabinoid treatment has been green lit but regrets that so few addiction research grants were given out.
“It’s a mixture of joy and a bit of sadness,” he tells Neos Kosmos.
“We had submitted other grants that didn’t get funded. Working in the addiction field there were very few grants to addiction given out.”
His world first research will focus on seeing if cannabinoid replacement therapy can work on helping cannabis addicted people to wean off the drug, just like how nicotine replacement therapy works on smokers.
The drug Staviex, which is already approved to treat multiple sclerosis patients, hasn’t been approved by the government to treat any other medical condition, and it’s hoped that this research will show its use can be extended.
“Using pharmaceutical cannabinoids we can actually adjust the types of cannabinoid molecules so that it’s much safer than cannabis,” he says.
“So it’s much less likely to cause problems like anxiety, psychosis, that regular cannabis users have.”
Professor Lintzeris and his team have been given $762,711 for the next three years to complete the research, and will be conducting the study in Sydney.
Also on the list of Greek Australian grant recipients is Professor John Toumbourou, whose research into adolescents and alcohol abuse has been given almost $2 million in funding.
As the leading team in Australia working to develop and evaluate effective community strategies to reducing adolescent alcohol use, Professor Toumbourou says the grant will help examine strategies to severely reduce alcohol abuse in the young.
“The newly funded NHMRC research funding will broaden an existing national randomised community trial of supply and demand reduction strategies designed to reduce population rates of adolescent alcohol use by at least 15 per cent,” he tells Neos Kosmos.
In terms of a medical condition very close to the Greek Australian community, Dr Jim Vadolas has been funded for the next three years to continue his work on thalassemia.
The genetic disorder is very prevalent in Mediterranean countries, but isn’t isolated there.
“We’ve primarily been a Greek community-affected condition, we are seeing now that different demographics are being affected by thalassemia,” he tells Neos Kosmos.
“We’re seeing a number of South East Asian folks affected by it and also a lot of sickle cell anaemia is appearing in the children’s hospital at Monash.”
For most of the researchers, the grants will go to salaries and paying for laboratory equipment.
The full list of Greek Australian recipients:
1. Professor Paul Glaziou
Bond University
Fellowship in increasing value, reducing waste from incomplete or unusable reports of medical research
$836,915 over the next five years
2. Associate Professor Sophia Zoungas
Monash University
Fellowship in improving health outcomes with ageing and diabetes: a focus on prevention and management of cardiovascular disease
$611,645 over the next five years
3. Professor Christos Pantelis
Melbourne University
Fellowship in neurodevelopmental ‘risk’ and ‘resilience’ biomarkers for emerging mental illness in childhood and adolescence
$182,383 for 2015
4. Professor Jonathan Carapetis
University of Western Australia
Fellowship in the END RHD CRE: developing an endgame for rheumatic heart disease in Australia
$2,496,816 over the next five years
5. Associate Professor Nathan Pavlos
University of Western Australia
Fellowship in the role of Sorting Nexin 27 in cargo-trafficking during skeletal homeostasis
$603,813 over the next three years
6. Associate Professor Andreas Fouras
Monash University
Fellowship in revolutionising the diagnosis and monitoring of CF lung disease
$792,777.95 over the next three years
7. Professor Stan Gronthos
University of Adelaide
Fellowship in the role of ephrinB1 reverse signalling in osteogenic differentiation during skeletal development and osteoporosis
$548,347 over the next three years
8. Professor Tony Tiganis
Monash University
Fellowship in hepatic oxidative stress, PTPs & STAT signalling in obesity
$1,040,820 over the next five years
9. Professor Arthur Christopoulos
Monash University
Fellowship in understanding mechanisms of allostery and biased agonism at the adenosine A1 receptor
$584,154 over the next three years
10. Associate Professor James Triccas
University of Sydney
Fellowship in a new class of inhibitors for the treatment of tuberculosis
$698,199.5 over the next three years
11. Associate Professor Ross Vlahos
Melbourne University
Fellowship in targeting oxidant-dependent mechanisms that drive COPD and its co-morbidities
$718,134 over the next three years
12. Professor Alexander Loukas
James Cook University (QLD)
Fellowship in secreted exosome-like vesicles from the carcinogenic liver fluke
$742,660 over the next four years
13. Associate Professor Christos Karapetis
Flinders University
Fellowship in personalised medicine markers of anti-EGFR antibody therapy in metastatic colorectal cancer: accelerating clinical translation with collaborative meta-analyses based on individual-participant data
$291,601.25 over the next three years
14. Professor George Paxinos
University of New South Wales
Fellowship in a 3D Cross-Modality Atlas of the Human Brainstem for Scientists and Clinicians
$352,077 over the next three years
15. Dr Peter Psaltis
South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI)
New investigator grant in a study of the origins of macrophages in healthy and atherosclerotic vasculature focusing on a novel population of resident adventitial macrophage progenitor cells (AMPCs)
$451,125.5 over the next three years
16. Professor John Toumbourou
Deakin University
Fellowship in estimating the contribution of adolescent alcohol misuse prevention to the reduction of alcohol-related harm in Australia
$173,7697.5 over the next five years
17. Dr Jim Vadolas
Murdoch Children’s Research Institute
Fellowship in identification and evaluation of novel epigenetic targets for the treatment of haemoglobin disorders
$717,617 over the next three years
18. Associate Professor Nicholas Lintzeris
University of Sydney
Fellowship in an RCT of cannabinoid replacement therapy (Sativex®) for the management of treatment-resistant cannabis dependent patients
$762,711.3 over the next three years