Scientific Judging Panel
THE CENTENARY INSTITUTE LAWRENCE CREATIVE PRIZE
Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, Imperial College London, UK
Professor Feldmann's interests focus on molecular mechanisms of autoimmune diseases, with a special interest in the role of cytokines in disease. These interests range from gene regulation of cytokines, how innate and adaptive immune responses intersect via NFkB, TLR and cytokines and extend to novel therapeutic approaches for autoimmune or other diseases. His work has the long-term intent of helping develop new therapies, so called translational research. Professor Feldmann's work has led to new treatments for rheumatoid arthritis based on the blocking of TNFα. Professor Sir Feldmann is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Centenary Institute.
Head, Oxidation Biology Laboratory, Mental Health Research Institute
The Oxidation Biology (Neuropathology) Laboratory at MHRI is dedicated to understanding the causes of Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and other age-related neurodegenerative diseases.
The major themes of projects running in the laboratory are: Oxidative stress in neurological disorders; the molecular and cellular basis of neurotoxicity associated with the deposition of aggregating proteins in the neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, Motor Neurone and Huntington's diseases; and advancing basic understanding of the interactions between cellular proteins and biologically important metals.
CEO and Director of Research, Translational Research Institute Pty Ltd, Brisbane Australia
Professor Frazer is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Translational Research Institute (TRI) in Brisbane, Australia.
Internationally-renowned for the co-creation of the technology for the cervical cancer vaccines, Professor Frazer began his career as a renal physician and clinical immunologist in Edinburgh, Scotland before emigrating in 1981 to Melbourne, Australia. He continued his clinical training and pursued studies in viral immunology and autoimmunity at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research with Professor Ian Mackay. In 1985, Professor Frazer accepted a teaching post with The University of Queensland and was appointed Director of The University of Queensland Diamantina Institute in 1991. In early 2011, Professor Frazer relinquished directorship of the Institute to commence in-post as CEO of the TRI. He retains an active research program at the Institute in immune responses to cancer.
Professor Frazer was awarded the 2005 CSIRO Eureka Prize for Leadership in Science and was selected as Queenslander of the Year, and Australian of the Year in 2006. He was also awarded the 2008 Prime Minister's Prize for Science, the 2008 Balzan Prize for Preventative Medicine, the 2009 Honda Prize and was recently elected as a Fellow of the esteemed Royal Society of London.
Australia Fellow, Griffith University
Professor Good is the Chairman of the National Health and Medical Research Council and heads the Laboratory of Vaccines for the Developing World at the Glycomics Institute of Griffith University on the Gold Coast. He is the past Director of the Queensland Institute of Medical Research and a past President of the Association of Australian Medical Research Institutes (AAMRI).
Professor Good's interests are in the field of immunity and immunopathogenesis to malaria and group A streptococcus/ rheumatic fever, with particular relevance to the development of vaccines. Professor Good is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Centenary Institute.
European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Heidelberg, Germany
Following medical training in Germany and the U.K., Matthias did his post doctorate at the NIH (USA), where he discovered "iron-responsive elements" initiating his interests in posttranscriptional gene regulation (translation, mRNA stability, NMD, miRNAs) and diseases of iron metabolism (anemias, hemochromatosis, degenerative diseases).
He also co-founded and co-directs the "Molecular Medicine Partnership Unit", a joint interdisciplinary and translational research unit of the Medical Faculty of Heidelberg University and the EMBL.
Matthias is an elected member of the European Molecular Biology organization (EMBO) and the German Academy of Sciences, and the recipient of numerous honors, including the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize (2000), Germany’s highest research award. His current work focuses on uncovering links between metabolism and gene regulation. Professor Hentze is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Centenary Institute.
Clinical Haematologist, Queensland Institute of Medical Research
Dr Geoffrey Hill BHB (Auckland) MBChB (Auckland) FRCPAFRACPMD is a Haematologist, Professor at Griffith University and Associate Professor at the University of Queensland. He is a National Health and Medical Research Council Fellow, the Head of Immunology and Principal Research Fellow at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research (NHMRC) where he is the lab head for Bone Marrow Transplantation Research.
Dr Hill is a renowned researcher both on a national and international level, and was awarded the Queenslander of the Year Award in 2005 for his contribution to advances in the field of bone marrow transplantation. His major research interests are stem cell transplantation and tolerance, Graft-versus-Host disease and Murine models of GVHD, GVL and immunotherapy.'
Dr Hill has been widely awarded for his research and presents his work extensively on the international stage. He is a member of the national grant committees for the NHMRC and the Leukemia Foundation.
Head of Cancer Medicine and Deputy Director, Western Australian Institute for Medical Research and an endocrinologist and Director of Research at Royal Perth Hospital.
Professor Leedman completed medicine at the University of Western Australia (UWA), then trained in endocrinology at Royal Melbourne Hospital in the mid-1980s. He completed his PhD at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne with Len Harrison on autoimmune thyroid disease from 1987-1991. From 1991-1994 he was a Lucille P Markey Fellow with Bill Chin, a Howard Hughes Investigator in the Division of Genetics, Brigham and Women's hospital, Harvard Medical School in Boston where he worked on the molecular mechanisms of thyroid hormone action.
He returned to Perth in 1994 as a Senior Lecturer in Medicine at UWA and became a Professor in 2003. His research studies are focused on the mechanisms of hormone action, in particular interactions between RNA and protein that govern expression of key genes involved in the proliferation of hormone-dependent cancer (breast and prostate).
Australian Research Council Federation Fellow, Monash University
Professor Jamie Rossjohn's research is centred on understanding the basis of infection and immunity.
He was recently awarded the prestigious Australian Fellowship from the NHMRC (2011-2016) and is currently an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow. Professor Rossjohn's research team and collaborators have provided seminal insight into the pathogenesis of infectious human diseases, adaptive and innate immunity and autoimmunity, publishing more than 180 research papers including generalist journals such as Nature, Science, Cell and PNAS, as well as top-tier journals in this area: Nature Immunology, Nature Reviews Immunology, Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, Immunity and Journal of Experimental Medicine.
Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry, Germany
Professor Ullrich is a pioneer in cancer research and is responsible for the discovery of the HER2/neu oncogene, the basis for Herceptin (Trastuzumab), the breakthrough therapeutic for breast cancer. Trastuzumab has not only delivered a major clinical benefit to women (a 50% decrease in tumour recurrence) not seen since the introduction of tamoxifen a decade ago, but also initiated the era of personalised medicine.
Professor Ullrich’s work in the field of signal transduction has elucidated major fundamental molecular mechanisms, such as protein phosphorylation, that govern the physiology of normal cells and allowed insights into pathophysiological mechanisms of major human diseases.
More recently, Professor Ullrich has been responsible for developing the first multi-targeted kinase inhibitor, SU11248/SUTENT, which is under consideration for approval for treatment of malignant gastrointestinal stromal tumours and metastatic renal cell carcinoma. Professor Ullrich is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Centenary Institute.
Joint Division Head, Stem Cells and Cancer, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research
Professor Jane Visvader co-heads the Molecular Biology group in the Victorian Breast Cancer Research Consortium, located at The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute. She has been awarded a NHMRC Senior Research Fellowship and serves on the Medical and Scientific Advisory Committee of the Cancer Council Victoria and the Scientific Advisory Council of the National Breast Cancer Foundation.
Her research focuses on understanding the epithelial hierarchy in the breast tissue, as well as genes important for controlling normal mammary development and those perturbed in breast cancer.
A particularly influential contribution of Professor Visvader's group has been the prospective identification and isolation of the mammary stem cell, recently published in Nature. This work has laid the foundation for understanding which cell types in breast tissue are predisposed to becoming cancer cells.
