Success for 2026 NHMRC Investigator Grants
By Rob Clancy, staff writer
Hudson Institute has had impressive success in the recent NHMRC Investigator Grant round.
Our researchers have been awarded more than $5 million for three new NHMRC Investigator Grants to work on projects within the Centre for Innate Immunity and Infectious Diseases (CiiiD).
Translating Foundational Microbiome Science into Innovative Therapeutics
Professor Sam Forster
The human microbiome is essential to health, yet many fundamental questions remain. My research explores how gut bacteria influence health and disease, and how to rationally modify these microbiome communities. Combining microbiology, computational biology and immunology, I study where these microbiomes come from, how they establish local communities and what these communities do during health and disease. This work will uncover new strategies to treat human diseases by altering the microbiome.
Defining the Role of Innate Immune Sensors at the Host–Microbe Interface in Inflammatory Diseases
Dr Shouya Feng
Uncontrolled activation of the immune response can lead to inflammatory diseases. Chronic inflammatory diseases, such as inflammatory bowel disease, impose a growing threat to human health. In this project, I will investigate the role of an overactive immune protein in chronic intestinal inflammation. This project will provide new insights into the interplay between the immune system and inflammatory bowel disease and inform the development of new immunotherapies.
New mechanisms and targets in RNA-driven inflammatory disease
Dr Jacki Heraud-Farlow
Fundamental to a functional immune system is the ability to correctly distinguish between material from our own cells and from a virus. Failure to do so results in auto-inflammation. This proposal will investigate novel regulators of this process that we recently identified, develop advanced disease models and test new therapeutic approaches providing hope for rare diseases that currently have no effective treatments.
Dr Jacki Heraud-Farlow is now Honorary Research Associate in the RNA Biology and Innate Immune Sensing Research Group.
This research was supported by | NHMRC
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