Dr Greg Monteith, School of Pharmacy
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| Dr Greg Monteith, School of Pharmacy |
Dr Greg Monteith from UQ’s School of Pharmacy received a $67,000 UQ Foundation Research Excellence Award for his research on calcium transportation and breast cancer.
Calcium exists in the body as a mineral for healthy teeth and bones, but also as a freely movable form inside cells.
Dr Monteith’s research focuses on intracellular calcium and the transportation of this calcium in the breast.
Intracellular calcium is transported through the body via different transporters, and there are a number of different transporters in the breast.
Dr Monteith’s research aims to control the transporters pharmacologically and is examining different transporters as potential drug targets.
"What my lab is looking at is not only how calcium gets into milk and what transporters are involved, but also how important the transporter is in breast cancer development, and whether it is a drug target," he said.
"There’s something that goes on in breast cancer that makes cells adopt a very abnormal expression of calcium transporters.
"We found that these calcium transporters are altered and so we are trying to understand them better to eventually lead to breast cancer treatments."
The quality of Dr Monteith’s research has resulted in valuable international collaborations with universities in the United States including Johns Hopkins University and the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory. Both are leading institutions in the field.
- Dr Greg Monteith www.uq.edu.au/uqresearchers/researcher/monteithgr.html
