EMBL Australia Group Leader Mikaël Martino has been awarded an NHMRC Project Grant to support him in engineering the second generation of growth factors and cytokines for regenerative medicine applications.
A/Prof Martino, who is based at the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute at Monash University, said growth factors and cytokines have great potential for regenerative medicine applications, but most of these molecules have failed to show efficacy in humans or raised major safety concerns due to high dosing and inappropriate delivery systems.
In this project, his team seeks to engineer the next generation of growth factors and cytokines to display much better effectiveness at low doses.
The research, which is funded for three years, will directly impact applications for chronic wounds, skin scar prevention and bone regeneration.
Dr Qi Zhang, a postdoctoral fellow in the Davidovich Group, also received an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) for her research investigating molecular mechanisms for the regulation of Polycomb repressive complex 2. Each DECRA recipient receives salary support for three years and up to $40,000 in additional funding per year for other costs essential to their project.