The University of Queensland is the only Australian organisation tasked by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) to develop a vaccine against the novel coronavirus.

Funding received by government and philanthropic partners is an important extension of CEPI’s ongoing financial support.

Donations could help reduce the timeline for an effective vaccine for COVID-19 by six months and advance vaccine research at UQ to prepare for future outbreaks.

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UQ COVID-19 vaccine researchers
Professor Paul Young, Dr Keith Chappell and Professor Trent Munro

Researchers have identified a promising new drug combination that could significantly help the immune system target cancer cells and kill them.

The study published in Cell, describes a treatment that works by combining an intravenous dosage of a well known anti-nausea drug, prochlorperazine (called Stemetil in Australia), with existing cancer treatments.

University of Queensland scientist Associate Professor Fiona Simpson, who led the exhaustive research project, said it could lead to new treatments for some cancers.

Dr Simpson has spent the past decade working on the research project, a tribute to her mother who she lost to cancer in 1999.

“The anti-nausea drug works by changing the surface of the tumour cells so that existing cancer drugs which target tumours are better able to interact with the immune system,” Dr Simpson said.

“The result is that cancer cells become sitting targets that can no longer escape the immune system.

“We observed a process we haven’t seen before and which increased the ‘natural killer’ immune cells’ ability to attach to, and kill the cancer. It is almost as if the killer cells become zipped to the tumour cells.”

The treatment can be combined with and improve the effectiveness of existing cancer drugs like cetuximab, trastuzumab and avelumab and was studied on tumours from head and neck, breast and metastatic colorectal cancers in mice, as well as five patients with head and neck cancer.

“These heroic patients volunteered for a ‘no benefit trial’, consenting to have a tumour biopsy followed by a 20-minute intravenous transfusion of Stemetil, and then another biopsy,” Dr Simpson said.

“We were able to show that the Stemetil altered the tumour cell surface in these patients.”

Following the initial findings, the researchers combined Stemetil with an anti-cancer antibody drug resulting in the disappearance of all the tumours from ten mice with head and neck cancer.

Dr Simpson was curious to see what would happen if they re-introduced the same cancer back into the mice four weeks later.

“Amazingly, their cancer was rapidly eliminated – as if the new combination, in addition to being more effective, was also able to teach the immune system how to better recognise cancer cells,” Dr Simpson said.

“The mice developed a long-term immunity to the cancer they initially had.”

The Fiona Simpson Cancer Research group has been working with expert immunologists including UQ’s Dr James Wells to translate the research findings to patient treatments.

“Our long-term vision is to use this approach to not only clear a patient’s cancer in the immediate term, but to prevent their cancer coming back in the future by establishing protective ‘immune memory’,” Dr Wells said.

Dr Simpson’s team is now completing a safety trial of the combination of Stemetil and cetuximab in head and neck cancer, triple-negative breast cancer and adenoid cystic carcinoma patients at the Princess Alexandra Hospital.

The collaboration involved researchers and doctors from UQ’s Diamantina Institute and Institute for Molecular Bioscience, The Princess Alexandra Hospital, Children’s Medical Research Institute, The University of Newcastle and The University of Sydney.

The University of Queensland’s technology transfer company UniQuest will seek to identify commercialisation opportunities.

The research was supported by the PA Research Foundation, NHMRC, National Breast Cancer Foundation, Cancer Council Queensland and the Rotary Club of Nundah.

This study is published in Cell (DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2020.02.019).

Three University of Queensland lecturers who made a compelling crime film to engage students in their psychology course have been named the Australian University Teachers of the Year.

The creative approach by Professor Blake McKimmie, Professor Barbara Masser and Professor Mark Horswill transformed their students’ learning experience, resulting in improved class attendance, quiz scores and knowledge retention.

UQ received more awards at the ceremony than any other university in the country, further consolidating its position as the most-rewarded Australian university for teaching excellence.

“Good teaching is about the right balance between student engagement, student learning and student satisfaction. For me, the reason to come to university is to not only learn, but to love learning,” Professor McKimmie said.

“Our aim was to send a clear signal that we wanted students in the Psychology of Criminal Justice program in class – and we decided to do something that would be meaningful to them.

“Instead of just sitting there listening to us, it’s actually our students participating and applying the knowledge.”

The course is based around a crime drama that starts with a murder, and then follows the investigation before ending with the trial, motivating students to apply their newly acquired knowledge through immersive class activities.

“Instead of just sitting there listening to us, it’s actually our students participating and applying the knowledge,” Professor McKimmie said.

“It is wonderful to work at a University that values and supports innovative teaching. We worked with edX, which provides free global access to online courses, to develop our on-campus and online active learning resources.”

Along with this top award, UQ’s Dr Kay Colthorpe received an Award for Teaching Excellence in the area of Biological Sciences, Health and Related Studies , for pioneering “meta-learning” assessment tasks, which prompt students in biological sciences, health and related subjects to become self-reflective and independent learners.

UQ also received the following awards:

Awards for programs that enhance learning – Indigenous Health Education and Workforce Development team

Dr Leanne Coombe, Dr Emma Crawford, Adjunct Associate Professor Alison Nelson, Associate Professor Jodie Copley, Condy Canuto, Associate Professor Jon Willis, Dr Anne Hill, Adjunct Associate Lecturer Renee Brown, Dr Lisa Fitzgerald, Professor Murray Phillips – the Faculties of Health and Behavioural Sciences and Medicine partnered with academic staff from the UQ Poche Centre for Indigenous Health, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit and IUIH, to develop and deliver culturally-safe and strengths-based curricula in medicine, nursing, allied health and public health university education programs.

Image: Renee Brown, Alison Nelson and Dr Leanne Coombe from UQ’s Indigenous Health Education and Workforce Development team.

Awards for programs that enhance learning – Getting Students SET for the future

Rhea Jain, Carlene Kirvan, John Walsh, Ashil Ranpara, Ryan Webb, Ken Lai, Jo Williams, Debbie Hathaway, Linda McConnell, Jacqueline Niblett – the Faculty of Business, Economics and Law’s Student Employability Team offers a service specialising in the delivery of employability programs to students.

Citations for outstanding contributions to student learning

Dr Christopher Leonardi – for promoting “experience-based” learning of mining engineering, without digging up the classroom floor, through the use of virtual reality technology and industry best-practice.

Dr Lynda Shevellar – for developing community in the Community Development classroom: Supporting diverse, non-traditional, and international students through community-centred learning approaches.

Dr Paul Harpur – for outstanding leadership in translating disability strategy into a vision of ability equality and core university business.

Associate Professor Rowland Cobbold – for engaging students in the classroom through Dialogue Education and leading large-scale curriculum change in Veterinary Public Health for over 15 years.

Details of all the winners of the 2019 Australian Awards for University Teaching are here. Watch a video on the Psychology of Criminal Justice program here:

Dramatic win for UQ’s Australian Teachers of the Year from The University of Queensland on Vimeo.

A University of Queensland team has met a key milestone in their fast-tracked research to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus, COVID-19.

In just three weeks, the team of researchers has created their first vaccine candidate in the laboratory and will move immediately into further development before formal pre-clinical testing.

The proof-of-concept milestone comes after the project’s announcement on 24 January as part of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) rapid response program.

UQ Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Peter Høj AC said the team has shown considerable progress in line with the highly accelerated time frame of the rapid response program, and the long hours in the lab have paid off with this achievement.

“There is still extensive testing to ensure that the vaccine candidate is safe and creates an effective immune response, but the technology and the dedication of these researchers means the first hurdle has been passed,” Professor Høj said.

The work in the lab shows the feasibility of using UQ’s ‘molecular clamp’ technology to engineer a vaccine candidate that could be more readily recognised by the immune system, triggering a protective immune response.

The next stage is to produce this on a larger scale needed for additional testing, to determine its effectiveness against the virus.

Researchers said the early research had gone ‘as expected’ and the material created had the properties which allowed the team to proceed with vaccine development.

The group continues to work to a much-accelerated timetable to keep on track for investigational clinical testing after the middle of the year.

UQ is one of only three programs globally, and the only one in Australia, initiated by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), leveraging ‘rapid response’ platforms in response to the novel coronavirus outbreak.

Images, captions, B-roll video and a 24 January 2020 press announcement are available via Dropbox.

MEDIA: UQ Communications, communications@uq.edu.au, +61 429 056 139.