Two University of Queensland graduates — Dr Steven Lane and Dr Mai Tran — have won Fulbright awards to undertake research in the U.S.
Dr Steven Lane has won the Fulbright Postgraduate Alumni (WG Walker) Scholarship to conduct research into acute myeloid leukemia (AML) at the Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.
The prestigious Alumni (WG Walker) Scholarship goes to the highest ranked postgraduate and is funded through an endowment fund supported by donations from Australian Fulbright Alumni. Dr Lane is currently an Advanced Training Haematology Registrar at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital in Queensland.
“AML is a devastating cancer of the blood and bone marrow which is rapidly fatal unless effectively treated,” Dr Lane said.
“Treatment involves administering high doses of chemotherapy and providing intensive inpatient supportive care. Although significant progress has been made in the last 30-40 years, we are still unable to cure the majority of patients with AML and certain groups (such as the elderly who are less tolerant of intensive therapies) have particularly poor outcomes.”
“A new class of drugs known as small molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitors are highly effective in the treatment of similar diseases such as chronic myeloid leukemia, however their role in AML remains poorly defined.
"We aim to characterise the role that these agents play in AML by evaluating efficacy, clarifying the biological mechanism of action and determining important factors that lead to treatment failure.
"This research may be used in conjunction with current clinical trials to discover a relevant biomarker for disease response or possibly to develop more effective and potent drugs to treat AML.”
Having the opportunity to study at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute will provide Dr Lane with access to a world leading centre of learning and research excellence. Professor Gary Gilliland, head of the laboratory, has a wealth of expertise and established track record in this field.
Dr Lane completed a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery with Honours at The University of Queensland in 1999 and was awarded the AMAQ Memorial Prize for the top Queensland student in the subject of clinical medicine.
He worked as resident medical officer and subsequently as a registrar in internal medicine at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital. He has also worked at the Princess Alexandra Hospital as a haematology registrar and was awarded a Princess Alexandra Hospital Foundation research scholarship in 2006.
“My time in the United States will complete the final year of training towards dual fellowships with the Royal Australasian Colleges of Physicians and Pathologists," he said.
"This work will encompass a professional doctorate (PhD/ MD) degree from The University of Queensland.”
“My goal is to develop ongoing long-term collaboration between laboratories and hospitals, allowing Australian sites to participate in multi-centre investigational trials based either in the U.S. or Australia. This would facilitate access to developing pharmaceuticals and technologies not currently available in Australia.”
Dr Mai Tran has been awarded a prestigious Fulbright Postdoctoral Award to conduct research at the Biomedical Research Institute in Rockville, Maryland and the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
Dr Tran, a PhD graduate from The University of Queensland, is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Helminth Biology Laboratory at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research (QIMR). Working with Dr Alex Loukas at QIMR and colleagues in the US and Brazil, her current research goal is to find a vaccine for the parasitic disease, schistosomiasis.
“Current control schemes for schistosomiasis rely on chemotherapy, however drug therapy has no residual action and individuals rapidly become re-infected after treatment," she said.
"Therefore development of a vaccine against schistosomiasis is crucial, providing a valuable tool to complement existing disease control and prevention programs.”
Dr Tran and her colleagues have identified two novel proteins called tetraspanins which elicit very high levels of protection in laboratory mice infected with schistosomes.
“Tetraspanins are expressed on the surface membrane of the schistosome, leading to the hypothesis that tetraspanins interact with molecules in the bloodstream of infected individuals," Dr Tran said.
"This, combined with the high protection seen in laboratory studies, suggests that tetraspanins can be developed into a human schistosomiasis vaccine.”
Dr Tran completed a PhD in Obstetrics and Gynaecology at The University of Queensland in 2003 and has been the recipient of the Queensland Cancer Fund Scholarship.
The Fulbright Scholarship offers an excellent opportunity for Dr Tran to broaden her current knowledge of tetraspanins by investigating their biological functions in the schistosome. She will join the laboratory of Dr Fred Lewis and Dr Matty Knight at the Biomedical Research Institute in Maryland, USA. This is a unique facility which has the capacity to produce large quantities of parasitic schistosomes that will be required for the proposed research.
She will also visit the laboratory of Professor Edward Pearce at The School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Pennsylvania to gain experience in gene silencing using RNA interference, a technique which she can also apply to other parasites studied at QIMR.
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. In Australia, the scholarships are funded by the Australian and U.S. Governments and corporate partners and administered by the Australian-American Fulbright Commission in Canberra.
Dr Lane and Dr Tran are among 22 talented Australians to be recognised as a Fulbright Scholar in 2007. Applications for Fulbright Awards open 1 June - see: www.fulbright.com.au.
