News Archive

In this issue we profile UWA’s Nobel Laureate Professor Barry Marshall, who divides his time between ongoing research and his role as WA Ambassador for Life Sciences.

Professor Marshall’s story highlights the impressive output of this University’s leading-edge scientists in tackling some of the world’s most pressing problems. And, as UWA marks its centenary year, the breakthroughs just keep coming.

One such advance relates to the incurable muscle-wasting disease Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and the discovery by Professors Steve Wilton and Sue Fletcher of a new genetic treatment approach. It recently won the pair the WA Innovator of the Year Award and has resulted in a licensing agreement with a US drug company.

Another discovery with worldwide impacts came from a collaboration involving 12 of the world’s leading plant biologists, including Winthrop Professor Rana Munns of the School of Plant Biology. This high-level research team found that specialised plant membrane transporters can be used to enhance crop yields, nutrient content and resistance to stresses such as salinity and toxicity from heavy metals. Published in the journal Nature, this research addresses feeding a hungry world sustainably – and extending the world’s stocks of arable land.

Scroll through media reports for the first half of UWA’s centenary and you get an insight into the extraordinary breadth of research being advanced on campus and through international collaborations. Thanks to UWA researchers:

• we know more about the role of new blood vessels in treating bone diseases and fractures following research by Winthrop Professor Jiake Xu, co-author of a paper with Harvard University’s Professor Vicki Rosen (who visited UWA as part of the Australia-Harvard Fellowship Program)
• our neighbour Timor-Leste has a new variety of high-yield (and highly nutritious) sweet potato much appreciated by subsistence farmers (published in Field Crops Research)
• the world has a new super strong metallic composite created by harnessing the properties of nanowires (co-author of this world first research, published in Science, is UWA’s Head of the School of Mechanical and Chemical Engineering, Winthrop Professor Yinong Liu)
• three new molecules have been discovered that could play a role in breast and prostate cancer treatments (oncologist Associate Professor Andrew Redfern and colleagues) and the precise delivery of drugs to diseased cancer cells is being commercialised from nanoparticle technology research by Dr Swaminatha Iyer’s team in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry
• we’re a step closer to unravelling the puzzle of bird migrations (Dr Jeremy Shaw and Professor Martin Saunders from UWA’s Centre for Microscopy, Characterisation, published in Current Biology)
• and a quicker, cheaper test for Type I diabetes could be on the horizon following research by Professor Grant Morahan and Assistant Professor Cao Nguyen (published in Diabetes). And the list goes on…

All these findings are the result of patient and painstaking work – in laboratories and research hubs on campus, in teaching hospitals and through the many research bodies and international collaborations to which UWA contributes. And with every advance and breakthrough, the skills and curiosity of a new generation of researchers is being nurtured to take on the challenges of the 21st century.

All of which is worth celebrating during our centenary! You can keep abreast of these findings – and other UWA news – by visiting the UWA website: news.uwa.edu.au