University of Queensland PhD student Major Alyson Auliff will use a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship to help in the battle against malaria, a major cause of Australian military casualties.
Major Auliff, a scientific officer in the Drug Resistance and Diagnostics Department at the Australian Army Malaria Institute and a PhD student in UQ's School of Population Health, was among 23 talented Australians awarded a Fulbright Scholarship at a ceremony in Hobart this evening. She will use the scholarship to further her research into beating resistance in malaria parasites.
Major Auliffïs project will focus on developing a novel system to investigate the mechanism by which malaria parasites develop resistance to drugs and use this system to evaluate new drugs.
The scholarship will enable Major Auliff to travel to the United States to conduct part of her research at the University of South Florida (USF) and at the Walter Reed Armed Institute of Research.
She said malaria was responsible for many deaths annually in tropical regions of the world and was a major cause of military casualties in Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel who were deployed to these regions.
"Although Australia is malaria-free it is still a public health concern that should be taken seriously, especially in Queensland," she said.
"Imported cases of malaria into Australia occur regularly and occasionally local transmission of malaria occurs because the mosquito that transmits malaria exists in North Queensland."
Her work will address the need to develop a system to better understand how Plasmodium vivax develops resistance to drugs.
"Vivax malaria has been a neglected disease, partially due to difficulties in growing this parasite in laboratories," she said.
"It is endemic to many countries in Asia and Pacific regions and causes a large burden to their health systems and economic development.
"In recent years it is also the species that has caused more health problems in the ADF."
Professor John Adams and his team at the USF have developed an advanced and efficient method that Major Auliff will use to develop her system to study vivax malaria.
She will use her Fulbright to build upon previous work she has done with Professor Adams and bring the technique to Australia.
"We believe that this will open up a novel way of studying drug resistance in the malaria parasite and help to identify new antimalarials that are not affected by the already developed resistance."
Major Auliff graduated with a Bachelor of Science with first class Honours in parasitology from The University of Queensland.
Discovering that the Australian Army operated a malaria research institute enabled her to combine a desire to work in parasitology with an interest in joining the armed forces.
She is Secretary for the Australian Army Malaria Institute Biosafety Committee and a liaison officer for Australian Army Malaria Institute with the Officer of the Gene Technology Regulator. Her research has received support from the ARC/NHMRC Research Network for Parasitology.
The prestigious Fulbright program is the largest educational scholarship of its kind, created by U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright and the U.S. Government in 1946. Aimed at promoting mutual understanding through educational exchange, it operates between the U.S. and 150 countries.
Media inquiries:
UQ Health Sciences Faculty Communications Manager, Marlene McKendry, 0401 99 6847.
Australia-American Fulbright Commission Communications Manager, (02) 6260 4460.
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