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Professor Chris Easton from the Research School of Chemistry will use a Discovery Project grant to study hormone regulation.
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ARC Discovery Project funding could help the thousands of people who suffer from debilitating hormone-related health problems.
Professor Chris Easton at the Research School of Chemistry (RSC) has won more than $900,000 over five years to investigate new ways to regulate peptide hormone levels.
He says peptide hormones regulate a wide range of physiological processes, and an excess or under-supply can lead to a range of painful conditions.
“In terms of disease states, these hormones are associated with gastric ulcers and cancers, among other things. We had a patent a few years ago where we listed 40 disease states at the start.”
Professor Easton and the RSC team want to investigate how enzyme inhibitors and artificial prohormones can be used to either inhibit the production of peptide hormones, or to boost levels.
“The opportunity to get this level of funding is excellent. So far we’ve been doing this on a shoestring budget. To get this funding and the centre funding means we can get on and do it properly. We’ve been contracting out some of the assays because we didn’t have the infrastructure to do it. Now we can do all the assays in-house.”
He said while commercial application was still years away, the results to date had been promising.
“It has the potential to be applied in a lot of areas not too far down the track. It’s nice to know that there is this level of support for the Research School of Chemistry. We’ve received more than $4 million in total, which is certainly welcome as we rebuild after the fire in August.”
This latest Discovery grant will augment funding from the ARC earlier this year for the Centre of Excellence for Free Radical Chemistry and Biotechnology, of which ANU is a member.
To see all succesful ANU applications for ARC Discovery grants, go to the ARC website.
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