Vital Monash medical research attracts $104 million in federal funding

Associate Professor
Maxine Bonham

Monash University has been awarded almost $76 million in the latest round of National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) announcements.

Federal Health Minister, the Hon. Greg Hunt, today announced over $500 million in grants through the NHMRC and Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) Clinical Researchers Program, as part of the biggest round of funding for the year.

The School of Clinical Sciences at Monash Health (SCS) received more than $17 million in project grants from a total of $91 million awarded to the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences.  

The Monash Health Translation Precinct (MHTP) attracted 27% of the Faculty's total NHMRC Project grants, the second largest recipient among the nine schools of such funds in this round.

The funding will support a diverse range of projects at the MHTP, from antibiotic resistance in blood stream infections, to management of stroke after hospital discharge and a novel weight loss regime in overweight shift workers.

The results brings Monash to a total $101 million in medical and health research funding secured by the University this year across multiple NHMRC and MRFF Clinical Researchers Program categories.

Head, School of Clinical Sciences at Monash Health Professor Eric Morand said our continued success in attracting grant funding is a testament to the world leading research being undertaken at the Monash Health Translation Precinct.

The successful investigators below include researchers from SCS and Hudson Institute.

Researcher	Grant	Project summary
Dr Poh-Yi Gan	$631,653	We have discovered mast cells as injurious participants in two important kidney diseases, autoimmune ANCA-associated vasculitis (AAV) and ischaemia-reperfusion injury resulting in acute kidney injury (AKI). This grant is a pre-clinical study to re-purpose an anti-allergy drug, disodium cromoglycate, to treat autoimmune AAV and prevent the development of AKI.
Dr Ben Rogers	$1,233,368	The grant is a collaboration between the Infectious Disease and ICU research teams at Monash. It is to allow up to 800 Australian patients from 15-20 hospitals around Australia to participate in a global clinical trial (planned to enrol 3500 patients). It will be the world’s largest clinical trial of blood stream infections. The study is comparing 1 week to 2 weeks of antibiotics for patients with blood stream infections. At the moment around the world patients usually 2 weeks of antibiotics. But this may be too long and expose patients to a higher risk of complications from the treatment and increase the rates of antibiotic resistance in hospitals and the community.
Professor Justin St John	$669,790	Many women suffer from either failed fertilisation or their embryos arrest during early development. This often results because their eggs have too few copies of mitochondrial DNA otherwise known as mitochondrial DNA deficiency. Using a pig model of mitochondrial deficiency, the project will show how supplementation with autologous populations of mitochondrial DNA induces changes in the genes that an embryo expresses to promote the transition from a metabolically poor fate to a metabolically healthier fate.
Dr Guiying Nie	$817,063	Embryo implantation is a key step in establishing pregnancy and a bottleneck in IVF treatment to overcome infertility. For implantation to succeed, the uterus must prepare appropriately so that an embryo can attach and implant. This project will investigate a novel mechanism that regulates the uterus for implantation and its implications in improving IVF.
Dr Sam Forster	$878,108	Antimicrobial resistance is emerging at an alarming level, rendering some bacterial infections untreatable and increasing dependence on last line antibiotics. This project seeks to characterise antimicrobial resistance within the naturally occurring gut bacteria to inform clinical antibiotic selection and minimise the emergence and spread of antibiotic resistance within the hospital and community setting.
Professor Paul Hertzog	$1,195,066	Some patients who are susceptible to specific infections have a deficiency in components of the interferon signalling pathway. Interferons are long known to protect from infections, but each component was thought to contribute broad protection, not to specific pathogens. In this project, we will characterise new specific functions of interferon components and pathways to generate new biomarkers of disease, patient response and new therapies.
Dr Kate Lawlor	$646,890	Obesity and type 2 diabetes are among the fastest growing chronic conditions in Australia and globally. This project aims to identify how different forms of cell death contribute to tissue inflammation and the development of obesity-induced type 2 diabetes. This fundamental knowledge will help direct the development of new therapies to treat these conditions.
Professor Dominique Cadilhac	$1,769,409	Over 50,000 new strokes occur annually. Transition to home after stroke is poorly managed within the health system with only half of patients receiving a care plan or prevention education at the time of hospital discharge. We propose a randomised controlled trial in 890 survivors of stroke to assess the effectiveness and value of a new discharge support intervention with 12 weeks of tailored electronic self-management support to reduce readmissions and improve self-efficacy within 90 days.
Professor Richard Kitching	$1,392,005	When the immune system malfunctions the body can lose tolerance one of its own proteins, leading to autoimmune diseases that affect 5-7% of the population. This project will use autoimmune kidney disease to understand why we lose tolerance to ourselves,  a critical step in the future development of more effective and less toxic therapies for autoimmune diseases.
Associate Professor David Nikolic-Paterson	$955,024	Patients with chronic kidney disease and/or diabetes are at high risk of developing acute kidney injury due to the markedly reduced blood flow to the kidneys which occurs during life-saving cardiopulmonary bypass surgery. Using new models of acute kidney injury in animals with chronic kidney disease or diabetes, we have identified potential therapies that could prevent this kidney damage. Importantly, two of these potential therapies are currently in clinical trials in other diseases, indicating that they could be re-purposed as treatments to prevent this common form of anticipated acute kidney injury.
Professor Thanh Phan	$711,032	Stroke is a leading cause of disability worldwide and results in significant economic and societal cost. Ischaemic stroke, resulting from an obstructive clot, comprises approximately 85% of all strokes. There are several new therapies, including the clot-busting drug, tissue plasminogen activator (TPA) and also endovascular clot retrieval (ECR) for large clots which obstruct the main artery. However, only a small subset of patients is eligible for these therapies.  There is interest in stem cell therapy as another treatment modality, especially for patients who are unable to receive ECR or TPA therapies or for whom standard treatment has failed.   This grant will fund a Phase 1 trial of amnion stem cells in acute ischemic stroke (I-ACT). The development of a safe, well-tolerated and effective cell-based therapy for ischaemic stroke would be transformational for the larger pool of patients who miss out on TPA and ECR.
Associate Professor Maxine Bonham	$1,413,033	Approximately one fifth of employed Australians are engaged in shift work.  Eating at night is associated with weight gain and the circadian disruption experienced by shift workers is associated with higher rates of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes when compared with day workers.   Current weight loss strategies do not take into consideration the lifestyle behaviours associated with shift work.   This collaborative study between Monash University and University South Australia will investigate a novel weight loss regime in shift workers who are overweight.  We hypothesise that a combination of energy restriction and meal timing will increase weight loss success over traditional energy restriction and reduce the significant and increasing burden of metabolic disease in the shift working population.
Dr Robert Galinsky	$978,979	Cerebral palsy is a devastating life-long condition. A large proportion of cases are associated with exposure to inflammation at the time of preterm birth. There is no effective treatment. The study will examine how inflammation impairs brain development and function in preterm infants and test whether blocking a key inflammatory protein in the blood, called tumour necrosis factor, improves brain development.
Professor Caroline Gargett	$1,397,337	Pelvic organ prolapse (POP) Is a hidden disease burden affecting 25% of all women. POP is the herniation of pelvic organs into the vagina, resulting from injury during childbirth causing sexual, bladder and bowel dysfunction years later as the condition progresses. POP has limited treatment options. We will evaluate our novel cell-based therapy combined with degradable nanobiomaterials for treating and preventing POP using mesenchymal stem cells from the lining of the womb.
Associate Professor Suzie Miller	$1,256,312	Fetal growth restriction (FGR) is a common pregnancy complication in which the fetus fails to thrive. FGR is associated with complex brain injury comprising altered basic cell morphology and whole brain connectivity. This project will examine the neuroprotective benefits of two treatments in a preclinical model of FGR and assess microstructural development. This will be correlated with connectivity measures from advanced diffusion MRI and functional assessments, which could be readily applied to the human brain.
Associate Professor Graeme Polglase	$1,289,423	A staggering one in five babies born in Australia require help breathing at birth.  This project examines ways of improving the way in which babies are delivered by investigating the utility of giving respiratory support before the umbilical cord is cut. By introducing this simple intervention, the aim is to improve the outcomes of all babies born in Australia.