Sydney Researchers Secure Over $13 Million in NHMRC Clinical Trials and Cohort Studies Funding

Four University of Sydney medicine and health researchers have been awarded over $13 million under the NHMRC Clinical Trials and Cohort Studies grant scheme.
The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Clinical Trials and Cohort Studies scheme supports high-quality clinical trials and cohort studies that address important gaps in knowledge, leading to relevant and implementable findings for the benefit of human health.

Professor Emma Johnston, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) at the University of Sydney, congratulated the grant recipients from the Faculty of Medicine and Health, Professor Jacob George, Professor Emmanuel Stamatakis, Associate Professor Peter Grimison and Dr Ameneh Khatami.

“Jacob, Emmanuel, Peter and Ameneh’s studies aim to address gaps in knowledge that will help the Australian community gain access to better treatments,” said Professor Johnston.

“Their success in this scheme reflects the University’s commitment to translating outstanding research into real solutions that enhance health and wellbeing services, practices and policies, and we are proud to partner with the NHMRC in supporting this important work.”

Faculty of Medicine and Health grant recipients
Professor Jacob George has been awarded over $5.9 million to use cellular and spatial genomics to understand liver cancer at the molecular level and build a national cohort for in-depth study, hoping to improve treatment and patient outcomes.

Professor Emmanuel Stamatakis has received over $1.9 million to use wearable device data derived from the Prospective Physical Activity and Sleep consortium to examine the combined associations of physical activity, sitting and sleep with cancer risk.

Associate Professor Peter Grimison has secured over $1.3 million to determine whether giving the same dose of a chemotherapy combination called BEP, Bleomycin, Etoposide Cisplatin, on a two-weekly schedule will be more effective than a three-weekly schedule.

Dr Ameneh Khatami has been awarded over $4.3 million to investigate the use of a locally produced two-phage combination that targets the golden staph bacteria to see if it provides an advantage in addition to antibiotics in treating patients with severe golden staph bloodstream infections.