Funding for research into pain and cancer treatments.
New treatments for chronic pain research, breast cancer research and research on tumours and tuberculosis attracts funding
New pain treatments, discovery of the next line of anti-TB treatments, breast cancer research and research into normal cells that help cancer cells survive have all attracted funding in this year’s Auckland Medical Research Foundation Awards.
New pain treatments, discovery of the next line of anti-TB treatments, breast cancer research and research into normal cells that help cancer cells survive have all attracted funding in this year’s Auckland Medical Research Foundation Awards.
Among the research grants announced by the Foundation today was the David and Cassie Anderson Research Fellowship to Dr Christopher Walker of the University of Auckland’s School of Biological Sciences. The $205,261 funding will be used for research to develop a new class of pain treatments.
“Every New Zealander suffers from pain and for many it is an intolerable daily burden,” Dr Walker says. “New classes of drugs are required because current pain treatments have significant side-effects which prohibit long-term use or simply lack the required effectiveness.”
Another project to attract
funding within the School of Biological Sciences is the
development of inhibitors for MenD, an enzyme vital for the
production of vitamin K2 which is essential for the survival
of the tuberculosis bacterium.
“Worldwide, TB is a
major health problem and in New Zealand, it
disproportionately affects migrants, lower socio-economic
groups and Māori,”
says Distinguished Professor
Margaret Brimble of the University of Auckland’s School of
Chemistry and School of Biological Sciences.
“TB is a difficult disease to eradicate, with multi-drug resistant and extremely-drug resistant strains emerging so that new drugs are desperately needed.”
Professor Brimble also leads a research team that has been awarded $158,317 over two years from the Foundation to deliver cytotoxic compounds – drugs used to target cancer cells - to selectively target breast cancer cells without damaging surrounding tissue.
The Foundation has also awarded a Doctoral
Scholarship of $126,500 to Jennifer Eom, also from the
School of Biological Sciences, for her research into
tumours.
While tumours can be made up of both cancerous
and non-cancerous cells, normal cells can also help cancer
cells grow and survive. Modern approaches to cancer therapy
target these normal cells – called mesenchymal cells - but
knowledge of where they originate and how they change in
response to invasion by cancer cells is limited. The
research seeks to gain better knowledge of these different
types of mesenchymal
cells.
ends