Two leading infectious disease researchers and a cancer immunotherapy researcher at The Kids Research Institute Australia have been named amongst WA’s most outstanding young scientists for their efforts to ensure kids around the country have the chance to lead happy and healthy lives.
Associate Professor Asha Bowen and Dr Chris Brennan-Jones, both from the Wesfarmers Centre of Vaccines and Infectious Diseases at The Kids Research Institute Australia, and Dr Willem Lesterhuis who heads up sarcoma research at the The Kids Cancer Centre, are three of the newest recipients of the Young Tall Poppy Science Awards, run by the Australian Institute of Policy and Science (AIPS).
Designed to recognise the achievements of Australia’s outstanding scientific researchers and communicators, The Kids researchers were amongst nine Western Australians recognised at the prestigious annual awards ceremony.
Head of Skin Health at the Wesfarmers Centre of Vaccines and Infectious Diseases and Infectious Diseases Paediatrician at Perth Children’s Hospital, Associate Professor Bowen is dedicated to ending skin disease for Aboriginal children throughout Australia.
While working in the Northern Territory, Associate Professor Bowen discovered that Aboriginal children living in remote areas had the highest reported burden of skin infections in the world – one in every two kids had painful skin sores or scabies at any one time.
“As well as being painful and itchy, skin infections can lead to serious, life-threatening illnesses such as chronic heart and kidney disease, so I’ve developed national guidelines and research projects focusing on strategies to easily recognise, treat and prevent nasty skin infections and ensure these kids have healthy skin and healthy lives,” said Dr Bowen.
Dr Chris Brennan-Jones, Ear Health Team Leader and Audiologist at Perth Children’s Hospital, knows the devastating consequences for children suffering long-term hearing loss due to otitis media (OM) – also known as middle ear infections or glue ear.
OM affects approximately half of all Aboriginal children and many are waiting over two years to see a specialist, allowing infections to worsen and hearing loss to increase, so Dr Brennan-Jones is passionate about reducing wait times for urgent treatment.
His team are leading the Urban Aboriginal Ear Health program, where community-based Aboriginal Health Workers assess children for OM from just a few weeks of age and link them to ear, nose and throat services at the hospital via telehealth services – aiming to reduce wait times down to just four weeks.
“When kids can’t hear their learning suffers - leading to issues surrounding education, behaviour, social relationships, employment and other future endeavours. That’s why early treatment is so vital, and through our research projects we can help provide all children with access to the right care at the right time,” said Dr Brennan-Jones.
Dr Willem Lesterhuis, Head of the Sarcoma Translational Research Team at the The Kids Cancer Centre, and Research Fellow at the National Centre for Asbestos Related Diseases at the University of Western Australia, is being recognised for his immunotherapy research in cancer.
With experience researching immunotherapy treatments for mesothelioma patients, Dr Joost has recently joined The Kids to apply these learnings to develop new localised immunotherapy treatments for kids with sarcoma.
“Unlike some other cancers, sarcoma is quite resistant to immunotherapy. We are now investigating how to change this and to make sarcoma sensitive to immunotherapy,” said Dr Lesterhuis.