(Pictured Left to right: Professor Andrew Whitehouse, Professor Asha Bowen, Associate Professor Rishi Kotecha & Dr Sam Buckberry)
Four The Kids Research Institute Australia researchers have been awarded $8.8 million in prestigious Investigator Grants from the National Health and Medical Research Council to pursue innovative child health research focused on autism, childhood cancer, skin health, and Aboriginal genomics.
Investigator Grants – announced by Federal Health Minister Mark Butler today as part of $411 million in funding for 229 health and medical researchers across the country – provide the highest-performing researchers at all career stages with five years of secure funding to tackle Australia’s greatest health challenges.
The funding, which this year includes an additional $35 million to better support early and mid-career researchers, gives scientists the freedom to pursue important new research directions and collaborations as they arise, rather than being tied to one specific research project.
Leading autism researcher Andrew Whitehouse – who is the Angela Wright Bennett Professor of Autism Research at The Kids Research Institute Australia and The University of Western Australia (UWA), and Director of CliniKids at The Kids – has been awarded $2.9 million to continue developing effective, efficient and scalable clinical pathways for autistic children.
Professor Whitehouse leads a team whose discoveries have already led to major policy changes and improvements in clinical care for autistic children.
Supported by the Investigator Grant, he and the CliniKids team will seek to fill ongoing evidence gaps in care by trialling and implementing effective interventions in the early childhood years; developing new methods for neurodevelopmental assessment that increase access and reduce cost; and discovering evidence-based personalised pathways that maximise clinical outcomes and minimise time and cost.
Clinician-researcher Professor Asha Bowen – who leads the Healthy Skin and ARF Prevention team within the Wesfarmers Centre of Vaccines and Infectious Diseases at The Kids – secured $2.8 million to continue the extensive program of work she is leading with her team, built around early diagnosis, treatment and prevention of skin infections for Aboriginal children to support their lifelong health and wellbeing.
Professor Bowen, who is also a UWA Professor and Head of the Department of Infectious Diseases at Perth Children’s Hospital, will continue to work closely with Aboriginal families, communities and Elder co-researchers to develop new ways to communicate the healthy skin story, help children recognise the need for skin infection treatment, and prevent the downstream consequences of infections, including rheumatic fever and sepsis.
Associate Professor Rishi Kotecha, a clinician-researcher from the The Kids Cancer Centre and Perth Children’s Hospital (PCH), has been awarded $1.5 million for his program of work focused on improving outcomes for high-risk paediatric leukaemia.
While treatment for acute lymphocytic leukaemia (ALL) represents one of the success stories of modern medicine, outcomes for certain subtypes – including babies diagnosed at less than one year of age – remain poor, with leukaemia a leading cause of disease-related mortality in children.
Associate Professor Kotecha, also from Curtin Medical School, will use the funding to identify and trial new drug combinations to improve the current dismal outcomes for babies diagnosed with ALL.
Dr Sam Buckberry – Head of Epigenetics within the Indigenous Genomics Team at The Kids Research Institute Australia, and Senior Lecturer at the Australian National University – has secured $1.6 million to pursue his work using cutting edge genomics and data science techniques to improve chronic disease prediction, prevention and treatment in Indigenous populations.
Dr Buckberry will use the funding to develop epigenetic biomarkers to improve cardiometabolic disease prediction, management and prevention. By developing new precision medicine biomarkers that specifically address the unique needs of Indigenous Australians, he aims to significantly reduce the burden of cardiometabolic diseases but also pave the way for a more inclusive, effective, and tailored approach to Indigenous health research.
The Kids Research Institute Australia Executive Director, Professor Jonathan Carapetis AM, said the highly competitive Investigator Grants were prized due to the way they gave researchers the time and support to pursue their broader research visions:
Scientists exist in a world where funding is always tight and difficult to secure. Schemes like the Federal Government’s NHMRC Investigator Grants are critical pieces in the puzzle that ensure health and medical researchers are able to get on with their core mission of understanding and improving the health of all Australians.
For more information on the funding announced by Minister Butler today, along with a raft of changes as part of the Federal Government’s new ‘Health Research for a Future Made in Australia’ package, click here.
Professor Whitehouse and Professor Bowen’s grants will be administered through The University of Western Australia, while Associate Professor Kotecha’s will be administered through Curtin University. Dr Buckberry’s grant will be administered through the Australian National University.