CPE Capital

On Thursday evening, the Garvan Institute of Medical research held its annual Researcher Awards. The awards provide important seed funding for innovative research ideas from outstanding early-mid career researchers.

At the event, Professor Marie Dziadek, Chief Scientific Officer at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research said: “Research prizes and awards funded by generous organisations provide great support for innovative science. They allow our researchers to push the boundaries and test ideas to support their applications for significant peer reviewed funding.

“We’re extremely grateful to CHAMP Private Equity, the Joseph Palmer Foundation and Ridley Corporation, who we’ve had long relationships with.” 

CHAMP’s Young Pioneer Award provides $10,000 in funding for initial experiments for an early-mid career researcher to test a new idea. Dr Nathan Zammit, from the Transplant Immunology Laboratory, received the 2019 award for ‘the TGN1412 trial, an immunological mystery’. The TGN1412 clinical trial tested a novel immunomodulatory drug, that began with great promise to treat autoimmunity and prevent rejection of transplanted organs. However, the trial abruptly ended after multi-organ failure was rapidly developed in the 6 healthy participants.

Dr Zammit has put forward a hypothesis for why this happened and why it was not predicted in pre-clinical testing. He will be able to test this hypothesis with the funding from this award.

CHAMP is pleased to continue its long-standing relationship with the Garvan Institute of Medical Research. 

Find out more about the 2019 Garvan Researcher Awards.