ASSC Enabling Grant Scheme Winners

Winners of the first round of the ASSC Enabling Grant Scheme were announced at the Alan Cooper Epiderm Lecture, on Friday 19 August, 2016. Professor H. Peter Soyer (UQ) presented on the Australian Skin and Skin Cancer Research Centre, and Professor Whiteman (QIMR Berghofer) announced the successful applicants.

Despite a proposed number of up to four grants, the ASSC announced five winners, noting that there was very strong competition with 13 exceptional grants submitted. The total investment for these grants from the ASSC, which has joint funding from The University of Queensland and QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, was over $208,000.

Congratulations to:

Prof Andrew Barbour, Dr Nicola Waddell & Dr Lauren Aoude: “The feasibility of circulating tumour DNA as an alternative to biopsy for mutational characterisation in Stage III melanoma patients”; $45,000.

Prof Riccardo Dolcetti, Prof Ranjeny Thomas, Dr Kelli MacDonald & Dr Andreas Möller: “Pre-clinical development of antigen specific immunotherapy and strategies to overcome regulation in cutaneous malignant melanoma”; $47,000.

Prof Adele Green, A/Prof Kiarash Khosrotehrani, A/Prof Scott Campbell, A/Prof Nicole Isbel, A/Prof Louisa Gordon & Dr Anthony Griffin: “Research evaluation of the Princess Alexandra Hospital Transplant Clinic: pilot study”; $45,000.

A/Prof Jason Lee, A/Prof Helmut Schaider, Prof Frank Gannon, Prof Nick Hayward, Dr Fares Al-Ejeh & Dr Victoria Atkinson: “Epigenetic modifiers as novel targets for therapy in melanoma”; $24,340.

Prof Mark Smyth, Prof Rajiv Khanna, Dr Michele Teng, A/Prof Rick Sturm, Prof Brian Gabrielli, Dr Mitchell Stark, A/Prof Helmut Schaider: “Immune contexture of transforming naevi”; $47,000.

The winners will be presenting at the ASSC Scientific Meeting, Thursday 13 October, at TRI.