Top Australian scientist takes another win for cancer research Posted on March 13, 2012February 25, 2018 by Carly du Toit The Australian Cancer Research Foundation would like to congratulate Professor John Mattick, Executive Director of the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney. Professor Mattick has become the first Australian honoured with the esteemed Chen Award, an accolade awarded by the Human Genome Organisation to recognise academic achievement in human genetic and genomic research. Professor Mattick is being commended for his pursuit of a then-radical theory regarding Human DNA. He has been described by the Award Reviewing Committee as a “true visionary in his field.” Ever since DNA was found to be a double helix, scientists had believed that most genes comprised the written instructions for proteins, which were in turn the building blocks of all body processes. Professor Mattick however, argued that the assumption was true for bacteria, but not for complex organisms like humans. Continue reading “Top Australian scientist takes another win for cancer research”
Latest research Posted on December 20, 2004February 25, 2018 by Carly du Toit Professor John Mattick believes this is the last generation that will be devastated by cancer. Speaking at the ACRF’s ‘Chairman’s Dinner’, in December 2004, Mattick, the Director of the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB) at the University of Queensland, outlined a number of key developments that could relegate cancer to an historical disease. “There is every reason to be optimistic that we will be the last generation to be devastated by cancer,” said Mattick, attributing the rapid progress in knowledge about the disease to advanced research in the post-clinical era. Mattick labelled cancer “the disease of the second half of the 20th century”, adding that we are only now beginning to understand its underlying genetic and molecular causes. “A generation ago most cancer research was empirical, because the disease was not understood,” he said, describing the chemotherapies and radiation therapies developed at this time as “blunderbuss approaches aimed at killing growing cells, which retarded tumour growth but had many negative side effects.” Continue reading “Latest research”
