University of Auckland
Events
A large number of staff and postgraduate students attended the NZIC conference held in Dunedin in November 2024. Opening the conference was a plenary talk from Dame Professor Margaret Brimble and the School was well represented with a keynote talk from Professor Cather Simpson and numerous invited talks from other staff and students. Many students also presented their work at the large poster session on Tuesday evening.
Staff successes
Awards
Professor Brent Copp, Dr Ziyun Wang and Dr Fan Zhu from the School of Chemical Sciences were all featured in the prestigious 2024 Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers list, representing 3 of a total of 6 University of Auckland academics on the list of the top 0.1% of highly cited researchers in the world.
Professor David Barker was awarded the Maurice Wilkins Centre Prize for Chemical Science (https://nzic.org.nz/awards-winners-16).
Dr Lisa Pilkington was awarded the ACES-NZIC Early Career Prize (https://nzic.org.nz/awards-winners-17).
Dr Cameron Weber was awarded the Thieme Chemistry Journals Award (https://www.thieme.de/en/thieme-chemistry/thieme-chemistry-journals-awardees-107362.htm)
Funding
Professor Christian Hartinger was awarded one of the two New Zealand Mana Tūārangi Distinguished Researcher Fellowships.
Dr Bicheng (Amy) Zhu was awarded a New Zealand Mana Tūāpapa Future Leader Fellowship.
Further details of these Royal Society Fellowships can be found here.
Promotions
Congratulations to SallyAnn Harbison and Viji Sarojini on their appointment to Professor and to Cameron Weber, Erin Leitao, Fan Zhu and Lisa Pilkington on their appointment to Associate Professor in the recent promotion round.
Student successes
Awards
Congratulation to PhD student Megha Thuruthel Kuriakose who received a poster prize at the MacDiarmid Institute annual symposium for her poster entitled, “Exploring the tunability of thermo-switchable deep eutectic solvent-water systems exhibiting LCST behaviour”.
AUT news
Congratulations
Dr Emma Davison and Dr Jack Chen were both awarded the Thieme Chemistry Journals Award (https://www.thieme.de/en/thieme-chemistry/thieme-chemistry-journals-awardees-107362.htm)
Congratulations to Dr Jack Chen who was promoted to Associate Professor in the recent promotions round.
Congratulations to Nimra Abdul Haleem who was awarded a prize for her poster presentation at the Dodd-Walls Centre symposium in Christchurch in November 2024.
Auckland Cancer Society Research Centre
Grant successes
Dr Leon Lu (PI) has been awarded an Auckland Medical Research Foundation project grant of $179,000 for 2 years starting 1 September 2025 for the project, “Nitric oxide-platinum conjugate prodrug for cancer”.
Platinum-based chemotherapy drugs like cisplatin, oxaliplatin, and carboplatin are vital in cancer treatment, yet their effectiveness is often hampered by severe side effects and resistance linked to elevated glutathione (GSH) levels in cancer cells. Our research aims to overcome these challenges by developing innovative platinum-based prodrugs that are selectively activated by high GSH levels in tumour cells. Building on a pilot study that created a mono-nitric oxide (NO) donor-platin conjugate prodrug - enhancing treatment efficacy but producing lower-than-optimal NO levels - we now propose developing dual NO donor-platin conjugates. These new prodrugs are designed to release higher NO concentrations, potentially increasing treatment effectiveness and providing more targeted cancer therapies while minimising harm to healthy tissues.
Dr Jiney Jose is involved in two successful grants supporting the development of a drug discovery program for treating brain cancers.
Jiney is the PI on the project, "Development of targeted tumour tissue specific therapy for diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG)" and was awarded $19,000 for 1 year by the Clinton and Joy Whitley Fund through the Auckland Foundation.
The project aims to develop a therapy for treating children suffering from diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma. Although the numbers are low (approximately 20-30 children are diagnosed every year with DIPG in New Zealand and Australia), there is no effective therapy for treating the disease. One of the underlying causes for poor survival outcomes for children and adults suffering from various brain tumours is the inability of most anticancer agents to cross the blood-brain barrier. Through our research, we are developing a drug delivery system that will benefit brain cancer patients and potentially improve their progression-free survival and quality of life.
Jiney is the AI and Thomas Park (Centre for Brain Research) is the PI on the project, “Targeted treatments for brain tumours: associating specific drug transporter expression in patient tumours with their respective drug carrier molecules to deliver anticancer therapeutics”, awarded $79,000 for 1 year by the Cancer Research Trust NZ.
Each year, over 1,200 New Zealanders are diagnosed with a primary brain tumour, and even greater numbers develop secondary brain tumours from metastases of other cancers with a dismal 5 year survival rate of 10%. This project endeavours to characterise tumour-specific targets that can deliver effective therapeutics to these tumours in the brain and use this knowledge to develop a drug delivery platform that will enable targeted delivery of anticancer agents to the tumour tissues in the brain.
