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Friday, 5 January 2007

The development of a new reproductive technique could help thousands of infertile couples conceive, thanks to a $90,500 grant awarded to the University of Adelaide by the National Health and Medical Research Council.

Dr Robert Gilchrist from the Discipline of Obstetrics & Gynaecology is among 326 recipients in Australia to share in a $60 million funding pool announced this week for health and medical researchers.

South Australia has been awarded $3.5 million in total, of which the University of Adelaide receives $970,975 for two Training Fellowships, three Postgraduate Scholarships and two Development Grants.

A two-year project led by Dr Gilchrist, using the world's best technology, will investigate a new reproductive technology technique called oocyte (egg) in vitro maturation (IVM) which drastically reduces the use and cost of drugs and the stress to patients.

"Infertility comes at an enormous social and financial cost to Australian society and in vitro fertilisation requires expensive drugs to stimulate the ovary," Dr Gilchrist says. "The cost of these drugs to Medicare is expected to exceed $100 million per annum over the next decade, so we need to look at other options."

Dr Gilchrist's team has recently made a significant breakthrough using the oocyte IVM technology, improving success rates by approximately 50%.

Follow-up experiments to refine this technology, coupled with negotiations with a medical manufacturer to licence oocyte IVM, is expected to result in clinical trials within the next three years to treat infertility.

Other University of Adelaide researchers offered NHMRC grants this week include:

• Professor Prash Sanders, from the University's Cardiovascular Research Centre, who has been awarded a $101,125 Development Grant for the development of a mapping system to evaluate the three-dimensional electrical activity of the heart;

• Dr Mark Hutchinson, an Affiliate Postdoctoral Research Fellow, who has been offered a $291,164 Biomedical CJ Martin Fellowship to continue his research into morphine addiction;

• Dr Theresa Hickey, from the Discipline of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, who has received $269,000 for a Peter Doherty Australian Biomedical Fellowship to investigate the role of androgen receptors in breast and ovarian cancers;

• Three Medical Postgraduate Scholarships have been offered to Ms Alison Care, Ms Naomi Cook and Dr Timothy Kleinig for their respective research into pregnancy-related infections, neurological disorders, and strokes.

  The projects funded in this latest NHMRC round include those from the University of Adelaide's Faculty of Health Sciences and their research partners at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and the Institute of Medical & Veterinary Science.