Spending up to 12 hours a day, five days a week, in the lab researching breast cancer has paid off for young Brisbane scientist David Bryant.
The University of Queensland science student, has received Cure Cancer Australia`s Young Researcher of the Year PhD student award, one of three national awards presented earlier this month (June).
The Toowoomba-raised student earned the $5000 prize for studying the movement of cancer cells (metastasis) in the breast, for his PhD in molecular cell biology at UQ`s Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB).
“We`re trying to understand when a tumour arises in the breast, why doesn`t it simply stay there. Why does it move somewhere else in the body?” Mr Bryant said.
A key piece of the puzzle was to understand how cells stuck to each other, even when they were growing and dividing.
“If we understand that, then we can understand how they begin to move away from each other.”
He said this was important because many cancer patients died from a secondary cancer that had moved elsewhere from the breast.
The 23-year-old, started at UQ as an undergraduate science student, then finished his honours in science and won the biochemistry alumni prize before starting his PhD at UQ`s IMB.
He said he was nominated for the Cure Cancer prize by his supervisor Associate Professor Jennifer Stow, also with the IMB.
Associate Professor Stow said Mr Bryant`s work shed new light on the regulation of proteins that suppressed tumour growth and those that regulated a cell`s ability to spread elsewhere.
He has accepted a job with the University of California San Francisco to further his cancer research.
The IMB also had four finalists in the Queensland Premier`s Awards for Health and Medical Research, with two winning their categories.
Grant Challen won the Postgraduate Student Award for his work on kidney stem cells and Becky Conway-Campbell won the Post-Doctoral Award for her work on treating multiple sclerosis.
Masa Cemazar and Dagmar Wilhelm were also finalists.
Media: Miguel Holland at UQ Communications (07 3365 2619).
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