Professor Christoph Nitsche awarded RSC's first NHMRC Investigator Grant

Professor Christoph Nitsche has been awarded a prestigious National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Investigator Grant, providing five years of funding to develop new proteins and peptides in the fight against infection and cancer. It is the first NHMRC Investigator Grant awarded to the ANU Research School of Chemistry.

The grant builds on Professor Nitsche's earlier work developing bicyclic peptides, and will expand his team's research into metal-bound peptides – attaching non-toxic heavy metals such as bismuth to peptides and small proteins to create tools that can block the enzymes viruses and bacteria need to survive, or target cancer cells.

“This is the first time that my group has received substantial medical funding to take our research to the next level,” Professor Nitsche said. “That's exciting. That's what I always wanted to do, having real-world impact.”

PhD candidate Upamali Somathilake has set up a new discovery platform and cell culture lab at RSC to help take the chemistry into the medical application space, built around a phage display library that can screen a billion genetically encoded peptides for candidates that bind to a chosen target.

The Australian National University had 11 successfully funded projects in the latest round of NHMRC Investigator Grants, which support ground-breaking research in biomedical, clinical, public health and health services fields.