Achievements

• Professor Colin Masters identified the importance of the brain protein, beta amyloid, as a key marker and primary cause of Alzheimer’s disease. 

 

IMPACT: Developing drugs to stop the progress of the disease

• Professor Geoffrey Donnan and his team are revolutionising stroke recovery through clot removal and new drugs

 

IMPACT: saving lives and reducing disability after stroke

• Professor Steven Petrou and his team are discovering underlying genetic causes of epilepsy and developing life-changing drugs

 

IMPACT: Curing and treating crippling childhood epilepsies

• Professor Graeme Jackson and his team are watching the brain working using MRI and how that may be used to cure epilepsy

 

IMPACT: returning people to productive lives by controlling or curing epileptic seizures

• Professor Brian Dean is revealing biochemical imbalances that cause schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder and an increased risk of suicide

 

IMPACT: Reducing suicide in key, susceptible age groups (mainly working-aged males), while also aiming to prevent onset of mental illness

• Professor Andrew Lawrence and his team are identifying brain regions and chemicals that cause relapse in drug and alcohol addiction, leading to possible new treatments

 

IMPACT: Preventing addiction, ensuring people live productive lives

• Professor Clive May and his team are discovering how the brain controls body inflammation

 

IMPACT: reducing the burden of kidney and heart disease and other brain-controlled inflammation of organs

• Professor Ross Bathgate and his team are building on decades of Florey discovery, discovering the human form of the relaxin hormone and its roles, leading to a new treatment for heart failure

 

IMPACT: Addressing the major cause of adult death – cardiovascular disease

• Professor Julie Bernhardt and her team are determining the appropriate amount of physical activity to perform following a stroke to minimise further damage but promote optimal recovery

 

IMPACT: Improving the lives of people who have had a stroke

• Professor Ashley Bush and members of the Melbourne Dementia Research Centre are developing novel drug and drug receptor engineering techniques to design new therapies for brain diseases

IMPACT: Enrolling for a clinical trial of an iron-sequestering drug to see if it will slow or stop Alzheimer's disease progression

• Professor Anthony Hannan and his team are describing the inheritance of environmental effects through the male germline to his offspring, with major implications for social and health policy messages

IMPACT: Encouraging mental health of men when family planning