Wei Duan improves survival chances of brain tumour sufferers
Associate Professor Wei Duan from Deakin University’s Medical School has secured his second national competitive grant since moving to Deakin – an NHMRC project grant that looks into novel treatment options for highly malignant brain tumours.
"Most
people with malignant brain tumours die within a year after diagnosis
due to the difficulty in effectively delivering drugs to the tumour cells,"
Professor Duan said.
"We aim to develop a safe and novel drug delivery system to effectively deliver anti-cancer drugs and novel anti-cancer agents to brain tumour cells that remain in the brain after surgery.
"If we can achieve our goals, this project will bring us a step forward in our efforts to significantly improve the survival rate and quality of life of patients with gliomas."
The project is a partnership between Deakin and the Monash Medical Centre.
Professor Duan has been a welcome addition to Deakin University and its Institute of Biotechnology (BioDeakin) and the Deakin Medical School since his arrival in 2006.
He has a background rich in both traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine - a medical graduate of the Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Pharmacy and a PhD from the University of Melbourne.
He has an accomplished
record as both a teacher and a researcher in China,
Singapore and Australia.
"I was
born in China, but I am an Australian citizen," said Professor Duan.
"Australia is my second motherland and I wanted to come here after
working in Singapore to do something for my country.
"I was attracted to Deakin University because it has a very good approach to biotechnology research - a multidisciplinary approach.
"When I worked at the Faculty of Medicine at National University of Singapore you rarely talked to people in the other departments located in the adjacent buildings about each other's work. The approach at Deakin is to not only include people from biological sciences, but also the physical sciences, so I think that is very exciting.
"Deakin University is a young, progressive, vigorous university and it is a challenge for me to make a contribution to its continuing growth."
Professor Duan is already highly regarded for his research work in protein kinases and protein phosphorylation in the context of major human diseases.
"Protein phosphorylation is a process that controls every aspect of our lives," he said.
"That importance is re-enforced by the fact that it is the only topic to have twice been awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology.
"If we can understand what regulates protein kinases, we can develop drugs that can turn them on, or turn them off when required in specific tissues/sites.
This has implications for treatment of allergic diseases like asthma, and also for all the major killers like diabetes and cancer."
A second component of Professor Duan's work will be the development of the drugs to regulate the enzymes. "I guess you might call it the search for the magic bullet," he said.
Because of his background, Professor Duan will also play a pivotal role in the Deakin team being developed to look at the efficacy of complementary and alternative medicines.
"At Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine I learnt and practiced both traditional medicine and Western medicine," he explained.
"After that I worked in University of Melbourne where I obtained my PhD and also worked at the Royal Melbourne Hospital before going to Singapore.
"I am very happy to be back in Australia, working at Deakin and living very close to the university which is another good thing about moving to Geelong - it is not too big a city - and of course, learning to barrack for the Cats and trying to understand cricket."
In addition to his passion of research, Professor Duan runs the Human Homeostasis course in the newly established Deakin Medical School. “I really enjoy teaching the latest advances in biomedical sciences to some of the brightest minds in Australia”, says the dedicated medical educator and researcher in biomedical sciences at Deakin."