Dr Alpha Yap is leading a laboratory that is developing ways to “read” the body’s microscopic “calling cards” – protein molecules which help cells recognise each other.
One of these key molecules, known as e-cadherin, is vital for the body’s normal growth during the embryonic phase and also for tissue repair in wound-healing.
However, breakdowns in this recognition process lead to aggressive and dysfunctional cells literally going on the rampage resulting in tumour-growth and the onset of cancer.
Dr Yap’s UQ Foundation Research Excellence Award is valued at $80,000.
A medicine and PhD graduate of UQ, Dr Yap is a Wellcome Trust Senior International Medical Research Fellow and has a joint appointment with the School of Biomedical Sciences and the University’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB).
“E-cadherins are like the body’s calling cards. They allow cells to recognise like cells and ‘get together’ for normal tissue growth and/or repair. However, it seems the process can go haywire when cells cannot discriminate like from unlike cells. These dysfunctional cells begin invading normal tissue promoting tumour growth and the onset of cancer,” Dr Yap said.
He said e-cadherins chiefly occurred on the surface of epithelial cells or cells responsible for the growth and functioning of the body’s tissue linings such as the skin, stomach and bowel.
“These are also the places where the vast majority of cancers begin and we are very interested in this connection and what role the proteins play here,” Dr Yap said.
He said while research on a world-scale in the area of e-cadherin proteins was highly competitive, his laboratory had the edge in discoveries of the recognition mechanism used by cells toward other cells, and in the state-of-the-art equipment used.
He said his research sat comfortably at the intersection of basic or knowledge-driven research and the drive towards new therapeutics for treating human diseases such as cancer.
Dr Yap said he became interested in pursuing an academic track while a medical student.
He was further convinced of this course as he completed clinical training at the Royal Brisbane Hospital with the Hospital’s Head of Endocrinology and Clinical Professor with UQ’s School of Medicine, Professor Robin Mortimer.
“Our training placed a high premium on research,” he said. “I am now honoured and delighted to win a research excellence award. It is wonderful, enabling recognition for the laboratory and giving the team an opportunity to really push their research along.”
Dr Yap, 41, has had 34 papers published in journals including the prestigious Journal of Cell Biology, Current Biology and the Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology.
Graduating with first-class honours in his Bachelor of Medicine; Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) degree from UQ in 1984, he has won a string of prizes, scholarships and fellowships including the Royal Brisbane Hospital Foundation Junior Medical Staff Research Prize (1991), the CJ Martin Travelling Fellowship from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and the International Research Fellowship of the American Heart Association (both awarded in 1994).
He has given lectures and seminars at the Harvard Medical School, the Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago, Yale University and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. He was recently an international invited speaker for the Japan Society for Cell Biology and Membrane Biology Forum.
Between completing his PhD in the laboratory of Associate Professor Simon Manley in 1994 and returning to the University in 1997, Dr Yap worked as a CJ Martin Research Fellow at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in New York.
