Media Release
May 4 2011
UniSA researcher wins prestigious Wellcome Trust grant
University
of South Australia evolutionary biologist
Dr Ellen Nisbet has won funding from the United Kingdom’s
prestigious Wellcome Trust for
research into new ways to prevent and treat malaria.
In joint research with Professor Christopher Howe from the
University of Cambridge, the project
has received $570,000 (Australian) over three years from the UK’s
largest independent funder of medical research.
The project will study the evolution of the malaria parasite with the
aim of targeting new drugs to treat malaria.
Dr Nisbet says malaria affects 500 million people throughout the world
every year.
“Half a million people die from malaria each year, and 90 per cent of
them are children under the age of five,” she says.
“There is resistance to all the main drugs in use today for the
treatment of malaria. If we can get a better understanding of how the
malaria parasite evolved, we will have a greater chance of designing
new, more effective drugs.”
Surprisingly, malaria parasites contain a chloroplast, just like plants,
although they do not carry out photosynthesis. This project aims to stop
the remnant chloroplast from functioning.
“We are interested in how the chloroplast makes protein,” Dr Nisbet
says.
“If we can figure out how the chloroplast DNA is copied to RNA so that
the correct proteins can be made, then the next step is to design a drug
to stop the process. If a chloroplast can’t make protein it will die.
Humans don’t have a chloroplast, which makes it an excellent drug
target.”
Two new medical research facilities at UniSA’s
City East Campus
– a malaria laboratory and a top of the range microscope suite – will be
important facilities for the project.
Dr Nisbet says the new microscopes will be used for imaging work during
the project.
“The new microscopes will be used to look at where proteins are within
the malaria parasite cell using fluorescently labelled proteins, which
is very exciting,” she says.
The biochemistry analysis of these proteins will be done at Cambridge
University. The successful grant will allow two post-doctoral
researchers to be employed, one at Cambridge University and one at
UniSA.
Dr Nisbet, who is also a lecturer in Life Sciences for UniSA
undergraduate students, was honoured as a Tall Poppy at the South
Australian Young Tall Poppy Science Awards in 2010.
Contact for interview
- Dr Ellen Nisbet office (08) 8302 2332 mobile 0450 317 484 email ellen.nisbet@unisa.edu.au
Media contact
- Kelly Stone office (08) 8302 0963 mobile 0417 861 832 email kelly.stone@unisa.edu.au