General News
16 June, 2025
Grants to make change
MEDICAL breakthroughs are on the horizon for FNQ, with two $49,000 grants funding research into a TB vaccine and developmental support for First Nations children—part of $280,000 awarded by the FNQ Hospital Foundation.
Twenty-five research studies into a vast array of issues that concern the Far North like diabetes care, disaster preparedness, COVID-19, therapeutic psychiatric drugs, TB vaccines, developmental support and more will now be able to begin or continue thanks to the $280,000 in research grants awarded this year by the FNQ Hospital Foundation to continue to produce better health and wellbeing outcomes for the FNQ community.
This year the grants ranged from $5000 to $49,000 with a rigorous peer review process involved in deciding the successful applicants. On Friday, the successful applicants were announced in an event organised by the foundation at Cairns Hospital.
Cairns Hospital paediatrician Dr Marnie Fraser was awarded the $49,000 grant for her for research into developmental assessments for First Nations children referred to the child development service, with the grant she’s looking to recruit an Indigenous health worker.
“We've been fortunate enough to get a $49,000 grant from the Hospital Foundation to do some applied research where we'll employ an Indigenous health worker to help us to understand how we need to modify our developmental assessments for children that identify as First Nations, under five years old, that were already being seen through the service,” she said.
“The assessment process usually takes from six to eight weeks and we’ll follow a cohort of children from the beginning of that assessment through to the end and, hopefully, we’ll learn new things that will help us to get our service right to meet the needs of First Nations families.
“My clinical feeling tells me that the way we approach developmental assessments should be different than the way we do it routinely and I think it deserves exploration and getting it right.”
The second winner of the $49,000 grant, postdoctoral research fellow Dr Guangzu Zhao from the Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine will use the grant to develop a novel peptide-based nano vaccine to enhance the effectiveness of Bacille Calmette-Guerin vaccination against tuberculosis (TB), particularly in drug-resistant strains.
This next generation booster vaccine could offer a strong potential to improve frontline TB prevention efforts in Far North Queensland and beyond.
“I believe this will particularly benefit FNQ’s First Nations people,” he said.
“We’ve gotten a very positive result in mice, we have improved the traditional BCG vaccine about five fold in protection efficacy and also very high in immunogenicity of this vaccine.”
Other grant recipients are:
Tanya Park $24,900, Let’s Yarn, A Community of Practice.
Santosh Chaubey $25,000, Rethinking Models of Outpatient Diabetes Care using eHealth (REMODel) for insulin dose adjustment in an outpatient diabetes management service.
Phuong Markman, $25,000, The Australasian MARS Study (Multicentre Aspiration Risk Study in 125,000 patients fasting with Sip Til Send)
Yoshimi Peck, $10,000, Towards a new generation of peptide therapeutic psychiatric drugs designed from conotoxins found in Coral Sea cone snails.
Caryn West, $10,000, Preparedness, Impact and Loss: The Tropical Cyclone Jasper Experience.
Kate Miller, $4978, Assessing the impact of novel immunomodulatory coatings on biomedical implants to advance osseointegration.
Daniel Brown, $4995, The State of the COVID-19 Immune Landscape in the Tropics: A Proof-of-Concept Study
Liza Van Eijk, $5000, Enabling early detection: Implementing the use of evidence-based clinical assessments in the Nursery/NICU to identify infants with higher chances of adverse developmental outcomes early.
Abdullah Mamun, $5000, Enhancing Rheumatic Heart Disease Care: Integrating Self-Administered Rapid Diagnostic Testing in Rural and Remote Communities.
Alberto Filgueiras, $5000, Improving health and body image among obese patients utilising low-cost compassion-focused therapy: a randomised controlled trial.
Kristoffer Johnstone, $5000, Safety Analysis of 90-minute obinutuzamb
Harindra Sathkumara, $5000, Unravelling immune heterogeneity in mycobacteria-exposed children from north Queensland.
Sonia Minooee, $5000, Evaluation of research opportunities and research engagement among junior doctors.
Lidia Delpozoramos, $5000, Understanding immunogenicity, safety, and protective efficacy of next-generation vaccines for tuberculosis.
Ben Gladwin, $5000, Standard fasting versus Twenty-four-hour Liquid Diet: Assessing GLP-1 patients with Radiological Volume Evaluation (STARVE): A Randomized Controlled Trial of Perioperative Diet Protocols.
Manjunath Rajashekhar, $5000, The role of rural clinical placements in shaping JCU dental student's career aspirations.
Handa Muliasari, $5000, Antidiabetic molecules from Australian tropical bush foods.
Shatarupa Das, $5000, Novel Insights into Inflammatory Bowel Disease: Evaluating Indigenous Medicinal Plant Compounds through Patient-Derived Organoid and Tissue Models.
Lisa Mercer, $5000, A partial meal replacement programme and dietitian education will facilitate weight loss and improved food choices for consumers with severe mental illness and taking antipsychotics.
Mert Kokusuz, $5000, Incidence of scabies in Far North Queensland: implications for local clinical practice and public health strategies.
Felix Muema, $5000, Tropical plant-derived drug-lead molecules for treating liver cancer
Lauren Moses, $5000, Navigating the transition to electronic medication management in a large regional hospital: Successes, challenges and organisational learnings.
Michelle Rothwell, $5000, Understanding first people’s lived experience of pharmaceutical care when transitioning between hospital and community – a grounded theory study.
