Six early-and mid-career researchers at The University of Western Australia have received funding for projects including research to change junk-food filled neighbourhoods to treating osteoporosis, eye cancer and chronic coronary disease.

Grants of $100,000 have been awarded to seven projects through the WA Near-miss Awards Ideas Grants 2022-23 program.

Dr Kai Chen, an ARC Early Career Fellow from UWA’s School of Molecular Sciences, received two separate grants for his projects; one to develop a new protein to heal broken bones and the other to develop an osteoporosis treatment.

Dr Chen said osteoporosis was the most common bone disorder in Australia and was estimated to cause one fracture nearly every three minutes a day.

“Reducing the population-level burden of osteoporosis is an unmet need,” he said. “This project expects to develop therapeutic drugs to advance the treatment for osteoporosis.”

The current estimate is that osteoporotic fracture costs more than $7 billion a year in Australia, with over 20,000 osteoporotic hip fractures annually.

“Our novel findings suggest a therapeutic protein has the potential to augment the repair of bone fractures,” Dr Chen said.

Dr Weitao Lin, from UWA’s Medical School and Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research, was awarded a grant for new therapeutic targets for metastatic uveal melanoma.

Dr Lin said uveal melanoma was a rare disease in which melanoma arose from the cells in the eyes.

“Current therapies provide limited benefit to patients and only for a small group with a metastatic disease,” Dr Lin said.

“This project uses cutting-edge technology to study the cells in the tumour individually and understand how they communicate with normal cells to prompt tumour growth, which could enable the development of new treatments.”

Dr Jessica Mountford, from UWA’s Medical School, will research the genetic and environmental influences on the development of myopia.

Dr Mountford said myopia or near-sightedness had rapidly become one of the leading causes of visual impairment for distance vision.

“Left untreated, high myopia can lead to serious complications such as retinal detachment, glaucoma, cataracts and vision loss,” Dr Mountford said.

“Both genetics and environmental factors, such as screen time and a lack of time outdoors, contribute to the development of myopia and there has been a global spike in prevalence in children post-pandemic.

“We aim to investigate the mechanisms involved in the development of early-onset myopia by studying the visual systems of the zebrafish.”

Dr Andrew Stevenson, from UWA's School of Biomedical Sciences, received funding to develop the cell therapies for enhancing skin regeneration after injury.

Dr Stevenson said burn injuries were traumatic for the patient and their family and had a lifelong impact.

“In Australia, over 200,000 people seek treatment for a burn annually, with over 8,000 admissions to hospital,” Dr Stevenson.

“The impact of a burn lasts a lifetime, the most visible being scarring which affects patients both physically and psychologically.

“Scars persist for life and can increase in size during periods of growth such as puberty or require surgical intervention.

“Recent developments in our understanding of skin cell biology will allow us to improve cell therapies used in treating burns and to reduce scarring in burn survivors.”  

Dr Lee Nedkoff, from UWA’s School of Population and Global Health, was awarded a grant to help develop a way to measure chronic coronary disease, to inform health planning, policy and practice.

Dr Nedkoff said chronic coronary disease was a major public health problem.

“We don’t have methods yet for accurately measuring the burden of this disease in our population, or for determining population-level effectiveness of management and treatment of these patients,” Dr Nedkoff said.

“This project will bring together large and complex health datasets to enable us to develop a set of observable traits for measuring chronic coronary disease prevalence.”

Dr Gina Trapp, from UWA’s Medical School and The Kids Research Institute Australia, was a recipient for her project to build an evidence base to push for changes to public health policy relating to junk food.

Dr Trapp said her team’s research had shown that many Australian schools, especially those in disadvantaged areas, were surrounded by food outlets promoting and selling and junk food.

“The absence of public health as a consideration in planning law has impeded repeated attempts by the community to ban unhealthy food outlets from being sited next to schools,” she said.

“This project aims to build the evidence base to underpin planning legislation changes to enable communities to appropriately regulate the retail food environment around schools.

“The outcomes have the potential to fundamentally change the way we site schools and control food development around schools in Australia, impacting the health and well-being of children and communities for generations.”

The Near-miss program is funded by the State Government’s Future Health Research and Innovation Fund which provides support for WA researchers who have narrowly missed out on National Health and Medical Research Council Ideas Grant in 2022.

The funding is provided as a one-off grant for 12 months to improve aspects of the application that have been found by the NHMRC peer review process to be improvable, with the aim of resubmitting to a future NHMRC round with an improved chance of success.

Picture above: Dr Kai Chen, Dr Jessica Mountford, Dr Weitao Lin, Dr Andrew Stevenson