2023 Rising Star Award Recipients

Type 2 diabetes is a chronic metabolic disorder characterised by high blood sugar levels and occurs due to the body’s inability to use insulin effectively or produce enough insulin.

Often confused with type 1 diabetes which is an autoimmune condition, type 2 diabetes is actually quite different and can be caused by a combination of genetic and lifestyle factors, including obesity, physical inactivity, and poor diet.

Ash is working to develop more effective and selective anti-diabetic drugs that can help reduce blood sugar levels.

He is focussed on a protein called AMPK, which plays an important role in regulating the body’s use of energy. Using his knowledge of the molecular structure of a particular version of AMPK, Ash is working to develop a drug which can specifically activate AMPK in the muscle, with the effect of lowering blood glucose levels.

Ash is a biochemist with a keen interest in metabolic regulation. He did his PhD through Australian Catholic University in SVI’s Protein Chemistry & Metabolism Laboratory, focused on the enzyme AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK).

Ash has worked on both academic and commercial projects and is particularly adept at the use of mass spectrometric techniques to analyse enzymatic behaviour.

Ischaemic stroke is a leading cause of disability worldwide with limited treatment options. In an ischaemic stroke, a blood clot blocks a vessel in the brain, cutting off the supply of oxygen and fuel to the surrounding cells. There is immediate damage to the brain, and this damage expands over time if complete restoration of blood flow is not achieved, affecting both nerve and support cells.

Ischaemic stroke accounts for 85% of all strokes, causes 6.5 million deaths per year, and by 2030 will result in the annual loss of over 200 million disability-adjusted life years globally.

In Australia, one stroke occurs every 19 minutes. In 2020, an estimated 27,428 Australians experienced a stroke for the first time in their lives and 8,703 people died from a stroke.

Understanding the way the brain responds to stroke at the molecular level is critical for improving patient outcomes.

Obesity and diabetes are major risk factors for ischaemic stroke and can lead to a long and difficult recovery. The exact reason and underlying molecular mechanisms for why diabetics are predisposed to poor stroke recovery remain unknown.

Ash aims to investigate the underlying mechanisms for why people who are obese and/or diabetic have poor recovery after stroke in order to improve treatment options. The outcomes of this project will have profoundly positive effects on the quality of life for stroke patients, their families, and carers.

Dr Ash Hoque is a protein biochemist who is using his skills to understand the role of the enzyme AMP kinase in health and disease.

Ash joined SVI in 2016 after completing his PhD at the University of Melbourne. A key aspect of his research is deciphering the molecular mechanisms that underlie cell death processes such as brain cell damage following an acute ischaemic stroke.

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune condition in which the insulin-producing cells are targeted and destroyed by cells of the immune system in the pancreas. Since insulin was discovered 100 years ago, there have been no real changes to treatment of type 1 diabetes.

Chris’ lab is investigating how a drug called baricitinib works to slow and even stop the progression of type 1 diabetes by protecting the insulin protecting cells from being attacked by the body’s immune system.

“We know that baricitinib can slow the progression of type 1 diabetes but what we are now looking at is how it does that. Understanding this can help pave the way for eventually finding a cure for type 1 diabetes.”

Dr Chris Chiu is a bioinformatician with both wet- and dry lab expertise.

He joined SVI in 2023, following a postdoc at the Peter Doherty Institute and completing his PhD at WEHI. He is applying his skills to understand the effect of the drug baricitinib in people with recently diagnosed type 1 diabetes who were enrolled in SVI’s BANDIT clinical trial.

While we understand how bone is built, we do not understand how cells regulate bone material composition throughout life to maintain flexibility and toughness and therefore, bone strength.

Weak bones are more prone to break than strong bones which can lead to increasing complications as we age.

While we understand how bone is built, we do not understand how cells regulate bone material composition throughout life to maintain flexibility and toughness and therefore, bone strength.

Bone mass and bone material quality both contribute to bone health but current treatments to improve bone strength are focused only on bone mass: they aim to increase mass by stimulating bone formation or by maintaining bone mass through the inhibition of bone loss. This project seeks to identify novel pathways which could improve bone quality in order to keep bone material strong and healthy.

Our ultimate goal is to understand how bone strength can be improved without needing to form new bone which may also be useful for other bone diseases.

Dr Martha Blank’s research focuses on understanding the factors that help maintain bone strength.

Martha carried out her undergraduate studies at the University of Applied Sciences in Vienna, Austria, before completing her PhD at SVI in 2022. She is expert in techniques that are used to analyse the composition of bone and is applying these to better understand how bone cells regulate collagen and mineral in bone tissue and how this influences bone strength.

Type 1 diabetes develops when the immune system’s T cells gradually destroy the cells that make insulin. As a result, people with T1D require constant monitoring and frequent insulin injections to control their blood sugar levels.

Our long-term goal is to develop a type of vaccine that can stop the immune system destroying the insulin producing cells. However, to do this we need a test that can determine whose immune systems are starting to attack their insulin producing cells.

We also need a blood test that can tell doctors and scientist if new therapies, intended to stop this autoimmune response, are working without having to wait for years to see who develops type 1 diabetes.

The goal of this project is to develop, optimise and validate a new blood test than can measure the strength of the autoimmune response against the insulin producing cells.

Dr Matt Lacorcia is an immunologist. He did his PhD at the Technical University of Munich in Germany, and also holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Melbourne.

Matt is using his skills to help develop a test that can measure the immune responses that indicate progression of type 1 diabetes using a small sample of blood from an affected individual.