A/Prof Sharon Ricardo, Poh-Yi Gan and Dr Susan Blair.
It was a big win for Monash University when our kidney researchers picked up three of four awards given out at the Australian & New Zealand Society of Nephrology (ANZSN) Annual Scientific Meeting held recently in Adelaide.
The winners of the awards were:
Roche Young Investigator Award (Basic Science): Ms Poh Yi Gan
Ms Poh Yi Gan is a PhD student with the Centre for Inflammatory Diseases in the Department of Medicine Monash Medical Centre, Southern Clinical School, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences. Poh’s achievement is unparalleled as she is the only non-Nephrologist to have ever won this award and the only person in the last 20 years to have won it twice! Her supervisors, Professors Stephen Holdsworth and Richard Kitching, both leading researchers in the field of nephrology, are extremely proud of Poh’s achievement.
Poh’s research is on “Defining a new role for mast cells in immune kidney disease”. Usually mast cells are best thought of as being important in allergy but Poh has shown that they protect from autoimmunity in kidney disease by augmenting the function of the body's "police force" called regulatory T cells that maintain "law and
order" in the immune system.
The Kidney Health Australia Best Clinical Science Award: Dr Susan Blair
Dr Susan Blair is a nephrologist at Southern Health and Clinical Supervisor at the Monash University Dandenong Hospital clinical teaching site. According to Susan, vascular disease due to blood vessel calcification is the major cause of death in people on kidney dialysis; people with renal failure die at a much faster rate than those without kidney disease. Dr Blair's study highlighted the value of long slow home dialysis in preventing the hardening and calcification of blood vessels in people on dialysis. Professor Peter Kerr and Adjunct Associate Professor Kevan Polkinghorne (both in the Department of Medicine Monash Medical Centre) were her supervisors in this study.
The AMGEN Best Basic Science Award: A/Prof Sharon Ricardo
Associate Professor Sharon Ricardo is a Group Leader in the Monash Immunology and Stem Cell Laboratories and the Director of the MBio Graduate School in the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences. The award winning research focuses on the generation of stem cells from patients with kidney disease. This achievement will allow for the development of patient-specific stem cell lines for disease modelling and targeted drug treatments. Sharon’s study was in collaboration with Professor Peter Kerr, who is the Director of Nephrology at Southern Health and a Professor in the Monash University Department of Medicine, Monash Medical Centre.
Note: Finalists of these awards were selected by abstract peer review prior to the meeting and awards were judged on presentation and science by independent judging panels.
Enquiries:
Professor Stephen Holdsworth or Jin Leng Graham - 9594 5525
A/Professor Sharon Ricardo - 9905 0671
