Dr Anai Gonzalez-Cordero research aims to restore sight in people with inherited retinal diseases, by repairing or replacing damaged photoreceptor (light-sensing) cells in the eye.   She has already shown that she can grow cultures of healthy photoreceptor cells in a dish in the lab and then use the cells replace the defective cells and…

Dr Ashley Ng is revealing how blood stem cells are controlled, and how they sometime go rogue, leading to blood cancers. He has discovered how a protein known as ‘ERG’ underpins healthy development of blood cells, and how it also plays a role in Down syndrome-associated leukaemia and a range of other blood cancers. As…

Associate Professor Siok Tey is researching treatments that will improve the survival and quality of life for her patients with leukaemia or other blood cancers. “Bone marrow transplantation is an important form of treatment for blood cancers, but it cures only two-thirds of patients,” says Siok, a clinician researcher at QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute…

 Dr Pengyi Yang plans to transform stem cell research. “Today’s stem cell treatments have been the product of trial and error. My virtual stem cell will allow us to understand what’s happening inside a single stem cell that makes it decide what type of cell it will become, be it hair, skin, muscle, nerve, blood…

Can embryology shed light on cancer growth? Proteins which control the growth of cells in embryos could teach us how to stop the uncontrolled growth of cells that is the hallmark of cancer, thanks to work by molecular biologist Dr Melanie Eckersley-Maslin. Vital to normal development in early life, these molecules may later play a…

Brisbane scientist awarded for research into new blood cancer treatments Clinical haematologist Associate Professor Steven Lane wants to lift the survival rates of his leukaemia patients. He thinks the key could lie in the genetic fingerprints of the blood cancer stem cells that proliferate the disease. Steven is studying how these cells become resistant to…