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Australia’s membership of EMBL to be renewed, your first hug and other news

In this month’s newsletter:

Posted on behalf of Nadia Rosenthal, Scientific Head, EMBL Australia

A better hearing test: invented in Melbourne, using words not beeps

Free and available online now for the four million Australians with hearing loss

It’s taken 70 years to invent a better hearing test. That’s how long we’ve been using the classic ‘beep’ audiology test, first developed to assess returned soldiers from WW2.

A team of Melbourne researchers has now created a new test that uses real words, not tones. You can do the test yourself at home or work and obtain an immediate, easily understood interpretation of the results. If you need a hearing aid they can send you one within days that is the equal of the best hearing aid, but for a fraction of the cost.

Your first hug: how the early embryo changes shape

Captured on camera, published in Nature Cell Biology

For the first time, we have been able to watch as filopodia reach out and grab neighbouring cells, pulling them closer and elongating the cell membranes. Credit EMBL Aus — For the first time, we have been able to watch as filopodia reach out and grab neighbouring cells, pulling them closer and elongating the cell membranes. Credit: EMBL Australia

When you were an embryo, just 8-cells large, your eight roundish cells did something they had never done before – something that would determine whether you survived or failed. They changed their shape.

The cells became elongated and compacted against each other, before returning to their rounded shape and dividing again and again.

It may seem simple enough, but this shaping process of cell elongation and compaction is essential for embryo success. When compaction does not occur, embryos tend not to survive. And the timing of compaction has been linked to success in IVF (in vitro fertilisation) treatments.

Golden staph paralyses our immune defences: Nature Immunology

A ringside seat in the war against infection

Images and video available

staph_3 — Depletion of macrophages (green cells) after injection of golden staph (orange-red material) into the skin. Credit: Centenary Institute/Nature Immunology

When golden staph enters our skin it can identify the key immune cells and ‘nuke’ our body’s immune response.

Now we know how, thanks to an international research group led by dermatologists from the Centenary Institute and the University of Sydney.

Using state-of-the art microscopy techniques, the team identified the key immune cells that orchestrate the body’s defenders against invading golden staph, and also how the bacteria can target and destroy these cells, circumventing the body’s immune response.

No funny business in science communication, and tracking science from the Red Centre to WA and into the world of stories

The Inspiring Australia family has gotten a bit bigger and noisier, with the launch of the new opinion and discussion website, No Funny Business.

This site was created by the Australian Science Communicators and ScienceRewired, with articles provided by Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science at ANU, but it belongs to the science engagement community as a place to share views and ideas on how we do our jobs. So head on over and make your voice heard!

Using diet to cope with the aftermath of stroke

$25,000 Centenary Institute Lawrence Creative Prize goes to young Melbourne researcher

One of Australia’s most creative young medical researchers has won a $25,000 prize to help her develop her ideas on how diet could prevent stroke deaths.

Connie Wong thinks we may be able to prevent early deaths following stroke with a fibre-based diet. She initially used innovative microscope techniques to determine how stroke weakens the immune system. Now she is studying how it also induces leakiness in the gut wall, leading to infection and an upsurge in deaths. And the solution may well lie in diet.

Keeping our best young bioscience brains in Australia

Centenary Institute Lawrence Creative Prize to be announced, finalists from Melbourne and Sydney

The winner of the Centenary Institute Lawrence Creative Prize will be announced at 6.30 pm, Tuesday 12 November 2013, at a reception hosted by UBS in Sydney.

There are three finalists. On Tuesday we will find out who is the overall winner of the $25,000 prize. The two runners-up will each receive $5,000.

Centenary Institute Lawrence Creative Prize – photos and short profiles

In this post are images and short profiles on the three 2013 Centenary Institute Lawrence Creative Prize finalists.

Diabetes drugs must be precisely targeted

When enzyme inhibiting drugs to treat diabetes were being developed, Mark Gorrell warned that care was needed to ensure the drugs targeted a specific enzyme, leaving other members of the enzyme family unaffected.

Thankfully, his warning was heeded by drug companies.

Associate Professor Mark Gorrell and his team of liver researchers at Sydney’s Centenary Institute have now confirmed that the diabetes drugs and potential cancer therapies based on regulating the dipeptidyl peptidase (DPP) family of enzymes must be carefully targeted to avoid serious side effects such as skin and intestinal damage.

Fixing the body’s leaky pipes

Centenary’s discoveries lead to a commercial agreement to create drugs to fix leaking blood vessels

Australian molecular biologists led by researchers at Centenary have made a synthetic compound that appears to allow them to control the leakiness of blood vessels. The work could lead to effective new drug treatments for strokes and tumours. Spinoffs may include an ability to reduce the side-effects of chemotherapy and inflammation.

Their lead drug candidate, known as CD5-2, was developed with the assistance of Mirrx Therapeutics, a privately owned Danish biotechnology company. Today Centenary has signed an agreement to develop this and other potential drugs with Mirrx. The agreement was facilitated by Bio-Link Australia Pty Ltd.

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Operations

Free and available online now for the four million Australians with hearing loss

Captured on camera, published in Nature Cell Biology

A ringside seat in the war against infection

Centenary Institute Lawrence Creative Prize to be announced, finalists from Melbourne and Sydney

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