University of Queensland scientists have won Queensland’s Premier’s Awards for Medical Research by uncovering a defective gene for autism and developing a vaccine for two strands of cancer.
Dr Paul Dawson, a senior research officer with the School of Biomedical Sciences, won the Senior Postdoctoral Award.
In his study titled, Involvement of Sulfate Transporters in Autism, Dr Dawson has identified a mutated gene in children with autism called NAS1.
Autism is a brain disorder which usually limits a person’s language development and social skills.
Dr Dawson, who has been researching the NAS1 gene for five years, said this discovery was exciting because it showed autistic children had low levels of sulfate in the blood.
“We’re the first group to show mutations in this gene,” Dr Dawson said.
“Although our results are really encouraging there’s still a lot of work to do.”
He said it was likely that up to 10 genes may be involved in Autism, including NAS1.
The postgraduate student award winner was Queensland Institute of Medical Research (QIMR) research officer at the Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) Biology Lab, Jai Kumar Duraiswamy, who recently finished his UQ PhD.
For four years, Dr Duraiswamy and a team of scientists have been developing a vaccine which kills Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma.
These cancers attack the lymph system and upper throat.
“These Hodgkin’s cancer cells are very clever in that they hide from the immune system,” Dr Duraiswamy said.
“We have developed a vaccine which can make these cancer cells susceptible to the immune system and boost the immune response so that we can kill all these cancer cells.”
His award entry was titled A Therapeutic Polyepitope Vaccine for EBV-Associated Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma.
He said there were more than 100,000 new cases of Hodgkin’s Disease around the world while Nasopharyngeal cancers were common in South East Asia, particularly China.
The 36-year-old from Lutwyche said he expected human trials of the vaccine would start later this year before being available in the next few years.
He said the vaccine had been patented and there were negotiations with commercial partners.
“This concept of polyepitope technology is not only applicable to these two cancers but may also have applications in treating other human cancers.”
The vaccine could be injected into a patient through a needle or a patients blood cells could be extracted and have their immunity expanded, before being given back to kill the cancer.
Dr Dawson and Dr Duraiswamy were presented with their awards at a ceremony at the QIMR last Friday night.
For more information contact Dr Dawson (phone: 07 33652873, email: paul.dawson@uq.edu.au), Dr Duraiswamy (phone: 3362 0346, email: jaiD@qimr.edu.au) or Miguel Holland at UQ Communications (phone: 3365 2619, email: m.holland@uq.edu.au)
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