congratulations to nhmrc winners David & Kiarash

We're excited to congratulate the TRI based UQ Faculty of Medicine researchers who were acknowledged at the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Research awards in Canberra last week.

Professor David Evans received the Marshall and Warren Award while Associate Professor Kiarash Khosrotehrani was presented with the award for being the top-ranked applicant in the Clinical—Level 2 category of the NHMRC’s Career Development Fellowship.

Professor Evans, Head of Genomics at UQ’s Diamantina Institute, said there are currently no treatments for AS (a type of inflammatory arthritis which leads to reduced quality of life and lifespan) that have been shown to prevent the gradual fusing of spinal joints that occurs in many people with the disease.

“Our project three-year involves finding combinations of genes that are related to levels of blood-based biomarkers, and then seeing whether these genes are also related to risk of ankylosing spondylitis,” Professor Evans said.

“The really exciting thing is that this framework can be applied to any disease using publicly available data that is out there on the internet.”

The other TRI based winner, Dr Khosrotehrani, leads the experimental dermatology group at the University of Qld's Diamantina Institute (UQDI), and his research focuses on tissue regeneration and skin cancer.

“In particular we are looking at stem cell mobilisation in response to injury with a view to improving treatments of skin wounds and preventing skin cancer,” Dr Khosrotehrani said.

Dr Khosrotehrani is also the deputy director of the Australian Skin and Skin Cancer (ASSC) Research Centre in Brisbane and practices at the Princess Alexandra Hospital.

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