EMBL Australia

A new biotech company led by Professor Peter Currie and Associate Professor Mikaël Martino, will receive more than half a million dollars to develop much-needed new therapies for the treatment of debilitating muscular dystrophies. 

A/Prof Robert Weatheritt was awarded an RNA Future Leaders grant to develop drugs to fight obesity and Dr Senthil Arumugam won a Team Science grant to further investigate cell size regulation.

Associate Professor Ville-Petteri Mäkinen is an EMBL Australia Group Leader, based at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute and the University of Adelaide.

An $857,000 grant will enable critical research in tissue regeneration to be conducted by a multidisciplinary team, led by EMBL Australia and ARMI’s Professor Peter Currie and Associate Professor Mikaël Martino and Dr Ryan Hicks from AstraZeneca.

EMBL Australia group leader Associate Professor Mikaël Martino has been awarded a coveted Senior Medical Research Fellowship from the Sylvia and Charles Viertel Charitable Foundation to develop novel regenerative medicine technologies.

Genes in the human genome are made of DNA. Upon gene expression, a segment of DNA is copied into another molecule called RNA. When gene regulation goes wrong, diseases like cancer can occur. Therefore, knowing how enzymes — highly efficient protein nanomachines — work to switch genes on and off enables the development of new drugs and diagnostics.

Associate Professor Maté Biro is the Cell Motility and Mechanobiology Group Leader for EMBL Australia, based at the University of New South Wales.

Research led by EMBL Australia group leader Max Cryle has revealed a key aspect of peptide machineries, advancing his work in countering the global threat of antimicrobial resistance and having broad implications for health and industry.

Research led by EMBL Australia group leader Dr Harald Janovjak has revealed the potential of optogenetics - a relatively new and rapidly evolving technology - to treat Parkinson's disease.

Dr Vaishnavi Ananthanarayanan recently joined EMBL Australia as a Group Leader, based at UNSW's Single Molecule Science.