APCRC-Q PhD students enjoy funding success
Kai Dun Tang won two travel awards. He was awarded a £1,000 Company of Biologists Travel Award from the National Cancer Research Institute in the United Kingdom. This award was used to enable Mr Tang to attend the 2014 NCRI Cancer Conference in Liverpool in early November 2014.
Mr Tang also received a $2,500 travel award from Cancer Council Queensland. This grant-in-aid assisted his attendance at the 26th EORTC-NCI-AACR Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapies in Barcelona, Spain in late November 2014.
At both international conferences, Mr Tang presented a poster entitled: “Tie-2 regulates the stemness of prostate cancer cells”. “I am honoured to have won these travel awards and I am grateful for the opportunity to to present our findings that the rare population of prostate cancer cells (known as cancer stem cells) which express the Tie2-protein, play an important role in the development of drug resistance and prostate tumour metastasis,” said Mr Tang.
“This work has important implications as we believe that Tie-2 might represent a novel therapeutic target for treatment of advanced prostate cancer patients,” he added.
In December 2014, APCRC-Q PhD candidate Ash Upadhyaya was awarded an Australian Postgraduate Award (APA) from QUT to support her research training.
APA scholarships are awarded to students of exceptional research promise, and the stipend will support Ash as she continues with her studies investigating the role of prostate cancer cell plasticity in the response to chemotherapy.
“Congratulations, Ash,” said A/Prof Elizabeth Williams, Primary Supervisor. “Winning an APA is an awesome achievement, and this is a wonderful recognition of your hard work to date.”
“I feel privileged to have received this scholarship,” said Ash. “I am especially grateful to my supervisors for their help and support, as well as the whole team at APCRC-Q and QUT.”
“I wish to congratulate all our researchers on their grant success,” said Prof Colleen Nelson, Executive Director, APCRC-Q. “These grants are a well-deserved outcome of the APCRC-Q team’s hard work and dedication to producing excellent research.”
