Congratulations to the following students who have recently successfully defended their theses:

•  Kevin Lee- ‘Synapse Dysfunction Induced by Autism Spectrum Disorder Associated Shank3 Mutations’. Supervised by Associate Professor Johanna Montgomery.

•  Nasim Mehrabi- “Region-specific interneuronal degeneration in the human cerebral cortex in Huntington’s disease correlates with symptomatology” supervised by Distinguished Professor Richard Faull and Associate Professor Henry Waldvogel.

• Alexandra Mowday- “Discovery and development of imaging-capable bacterial nitroreductases and their cytotoxic prodrugs for Clostridium sporogenes based gene therapy”. Supervised by Associate Professor Adam Patterson and Dr Jeff Smaill.

• Ankita Umapathy- ‘Glutathione metabolism and transport pathways in the anterior rat eye: Is the lens a reservoir of glutathione?’. Supervised by Dr Julie Lim and Professor Paul Donaldson.

Kevin, Nasim and Ankita have also been included in the Deans List.

Christopher Lear from the Fetal Physiology and Neuroscience Group won the 'PSNZ Mary Bullivant Award' for Best Student Oral Presentation at the Medical Sciences Congress.

Christopher is supervised by Professor Laura Bennet and Professor Alistair Gunn and co-supervised by Dr Joanne Davidson. The competition was very tough this year and a number of SMS students also gave excellent presentations at the meeting. 

Melody Bevan received the ‘2015 Nestlé Top Student Award’ at the ‘Dietitians New Zealand National Professional Development Conference’ in Wellington.

This national award is given to a dietetics student with the highest level of academic achievement. Melody (MHSci Nutrition and Dietetics student) is currently undertaking clinical research into oral feeding intolerance in patients with acute pancreatitis under the supervision of Dr Max Petrov (Department of Surgery) and Varsha Asrani (Nutrition and Dietetics, Auckland City Hospital).

Melody has also recently published her first article in a reputable international peer-reviewed journal- a commendable achievement this early on in her career.

HealtheX 2015 Winner

Susann Beier’s - was the runner up winner of the Doctoral Oral Presentation Category with a presentation entitled ‘3D printed flow phantoms for dynamically scaled phase contrast MRI to improve coronary artery disease understanding’. Susann’s project is supervised by Professor Alistair Young from the Department of Anatomy and Medical Imaging.

Inagural Graduation of MHSc Nutriton and Dietietic Students 

Nine MHSc Nutrition and Dietetic students graduated at the Spring Graduation. They are the first cohort to graduate from our new programme. Nadia Harvey, Sarah McKenzie, Elize Van Drimmelen (photographed) were  present at the graduation ceremony.

Congratulations to the Principal Investigators who have been awarded Faculty Research Development Fund grants:

• Associate Professor Michael Hay (Auckland Cancer Society Research Centre)
  Targeting the Unfolded Protein Response
  
  
• Dr Carolyn Barrett (Physiology)
  Ovarian hormones and autonomic dysfunction in heart failure
  
  
• Associate Professor Clare Wall (Nutrition)
  Maternal Folic Acid Supplement Use and Pregnancy Outcome
  
  
• Dr Maria Kubke (Anatomy)
  Brain Machine Interface for Vocal Communication
  
  
• Associate Professor Srdjan Vlajkovic (Physiology)
  Neurabin/RGS4 complex as a novel target for cochlear protection from acoustic trauma
  
  
• Dr Justin Dean (Physiology)
  Neuronal hyaluronan as a novel regulator of neuronal plasticity

Congratulations to our staff members and the clinicians from Auckland District Health Board awarded Academic Health Alliance Collaboration Grants.

• Dr Stefan Bohlander (Molecular Medicine and Pathology) and Dr Neil van de Water (ADHB Diagnostic Genetics) -‘Minimal Residual Disease (MRD) Diagnostics in Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML) using Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS)’.
  
  
• Associate Professor Johanna Montgomery (Physiology) and Associate Professor Jonathan Skinner (ADHB Paediatric and Congenital Cardiac Services) -‘Joining of hearts and minds to address the cellular basis of Long QT Syndrome’.

Dr Emma Scotter and Dr Troy Merry have both been awarded Rutherford Discovery Fellowships. The Fellowships foster the development of future research leaders by providing funding of up to $800,000 each over five years to cover salary and research costs. 

• Dr Emma Scotter- ‘The theory of (not quite) everything: The neglected role of the blood-brain-barrier in motor neuron disease.’
• Dr Troy Merry- ‘Beta-catenin facilitates skeletal muscle glucose transport and pancreatic beta-cell insulin secretion.’

High Impact papers

Rohan Ameratunga, See-Tarn Woon, Peter Browett, Euphemia Leung, Klaus Lehnert have published a paper in the American Journal of Human Genetics on Common Variable Immunodeficiency (CVID).

The discovery of the gene defect allows family members to be diagnosed earlier to prevent organ damage caused by CVID and possibly undergo pre-implantation genetics diagnosis if required.

Read more about the paper

David J. Crossman, Alistair A. Young, Peter N. Ruygrok, Guy P. Nason, David Baddelely, Christian Soeller, and Mark B. Cannell have published a paper titled ‘t-tubule disease: Relationship between t-tubule organization and regional contractile performance in human dilated cardiomyopathy’

This study a collaboration between the Department of Physiology, and the Department of Anatomy with Radiology at University of Auckland and the Cardiology Department at Auckland District Health Board was published in the ‘Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology’ identified damage to muscle cell electrical conduction system is responsible for the loss of contractility within the failing human heart.

The importance of the work was highlighted by positive editorial appearing in the same issue of the journal.

Read the paper and editorial

Francis W Hunter, Richard J Young, Zvi Shalev, Ravi N. Vellanki, Jingli Wang, Yongchuan Gu, Naveen Joshi, Sreevalsan Sreebhavan, Ilan Weinreb, David P Goldstein, Jason Moffat, Troy Ketela, Kevin R Brown, Marianne Koritzinsky, Benjamin Solomon, Danny Rischin, William R Wilson, and  Bradly G. Wouters,have published a paper entitled ‘Identification of P450 Oxidoreductase as a Major Determinant of Sensitivity to Hypoxia-Activated Prodrugs’
 
The study a collaboration between the Auckland Cancer Society Research Centre, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre  and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre (Melbourne) identified an enzyme that appears to be critical for the response to a class of hypoxia-targeting drugs, with implications for improving the treatment of hypoxic solid tumours."

Read the paper

Noha Ahmed Nasef, Sunali Mehta, Penny Powell, Gareth Marlow, Tom Wileman, Lynnette R Ferguson have published a paper titled ‘Extracts of Feijoa Inhibit Toll-Like Receptor 2 Signaling and Activate Autophagy Implicating a Role in Dietary Control of IBD’ in PLoS One. 2015 Jun 25;10(6):e0130910. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0130910. eCollection 2015.

Read the paper

Avan Suinesiaputra, David A. Bluemke, Brett R. Cowan, Matthias G. Friedrich, Christopher M. Kramer, Raymond Kwong, Sven Plein, Jeanette Schulz- Menger, Jos J. M. Westenberg, Alistair A. Young and Eike Nagel has published on paper in the ‘Journal of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance’ entitled “Quantification of LV function and mass by cardiovascular magnetic resonance: multi-center variability and consensus contours’

This was a collaboration work between experts of cardiac imaging from seven core-labs worldwide to establish a consensus data of myocardial contours.

The consensus data is a valuable resource as the gold standard for clinical cardiologists, radiographers and researchers to assess new readers and to benchmark new automated methods.

The University of Auckland was the lead in this work where the data is now being shared for public under the Cardiac Atlas Project.

Read the paper

School Forum

The School forum is schedule for the 5 November at 3pm in the Robb lecture theatre, Room 505-B09 and will be followed by drinks and nibbles in the Atrium.

HazTRAC

The HazTRAC project has arrived at the Grafton Campus and two SMS research groups will trial the SciQuest ERM system before it is implemented further within FMHS.

The research groups lead by Paul Donaldson and Simon Swift will initiate the implementation of SciQuest in their research laboratories and have begun using the software for purchasing and tracking chemicals and biological items.

This is part of the HazTRAC initiative which will soon see SciQuest used for ordering and inventorying all chemicals and biological products across the University of Auckland. This is a world leading project with the University being the first in the world to use a combined ordering and inventory software for MPI or containment compliance.

Implementation will occur in 2 phases:

• Phase 1 – The stocktake of existing materials

Some of you may have seen members of the HazTRAC team in the laboratories recording and barcoding chemicals. The team can be easily identified by their distinctive t shirts and lab coats branded with SciQuest ERM. The team will be moving across the whole campus recording and bar coding all chemicals currently held in stock. Biological items will also be recorded but -80 and liquid nitrogen stocks will not be retrospectively barcoded.

• Phase 2 – The Roll-out of SciQuest ERM and training. The HazTRAC team will be contacting research groups and teaching support units individually in the coming weeks to provide information and to help identify key staff. Training for all staff and students will also be organised at the same time. Your floor laboratory or technical managers will assist in this process and Vicky Tsang (profiled in the last newsletter) will provide ongoing support once the process is in place.

You can find more information by going to the HazTRAC website or emailing the team at haztrac@auckland.ac.nz.