Burnet was honoured to welcome Lady Primrose Potter AC to the Institute to award three Emerging Leader Fellowships to worthy recipients.
The inaugural fellowships will allow the researchers to continue their vital work in vector-borne disease transmission, global maternal health and HIV and hepatitis C elimination.
Lady Potter is a renowned patron of philanthropy and an advocate for the arts, health, medicine, sciences and social causes in Australia.
Having served as life governor of The Ian Potter Foundation since 1993, Lady Potter has championed various issues from science and medicine to the arts, delivering considerable benefits to the wider community.
Following a significant personal donation to the Institute last year, the Lady Potter, Burnet Emerging Leader Fellowship was established to acknowledge and recognise Lady Potter’s significant personal contribution to the Institute.
Lady Potter is a patron of Burnet and her connection to the Institute dates back to when it was a small virus laboratory at the former Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital.
During the AIDS epidemic in the late 1980s, Lady Potter sat with and comforted patients with AIDS, many of whom were dying, at Fairfield Hospital.
"A friend of mine who was sick with AIDS at the time asked me to get involved in addressing AIDS and raising funds to help people, so I did," she said.
"It is about looking after people and keeping people well.
"Burnet has come such a long way, and we’ve made great progress in AIDS research."
Since that early connection to Burnet’s work in AIDS research, Lady Potter has been a long-term advocate for medical research and an energetic supporter of Burnet’s work.
The three Burnet recipients of the Lady Potter, Burnet Emerging Leader Fellowships were Dr Fiona Angrisano, Dr Annie McDougall and Dr Rachel Sacks-Davis.
With an additional contribution made by Burnet to the fellowships, each recipient will receive $250,000 towards their research work.
Lady Potter congratulated the recipients on their research and said she looked forward to seeing the outcomes of the work from these fellowships.
Dr Angrisano will use the fellowship to continue her work in identifying and developing novel transmission-blocking vaccines for malaria. These vaccines work by stopping the transfer of parasites from humans to mosquitos, ultimately reducing the spread of malaria.
Malaria is endemic in more than 80 countries, causing nearly 250 million infections and more than 600,000 deaths annually worldwide. It remains a devasting infectious disease that impacts some of the most vulnerable populations, including children and pregnant women.
The World Health Organization (WHO) African Region carries a disproportionately high share of the global malaria burden. In this region, children under 5 years of age account for 78% of malaria deaths.
Dr Angrisano started her career as a parasitologist in malaria cell biology and her research was pivotal in describing the way malaria parasites move into red blood cells causing clinical disease. Her subsequent work evolved to incorporate a translational emphasis, to identify and develop malaria transmission-blocking vaccines.
Dr Angrisano has contributed to significant advances in vaccine design, the identification of multiple new malaria transmission-blocking vaccine targets, the design of novel vaccine delivery systems and development of advanced methods to assess vaccine efficacy.
"I’m incredibly thankful to Lady Potter and Burnet Institute for this fellowship," Dr Angrisano said.
"This fellowship is incredibly special as it provides me with the opportunity to continue the vital work we do, in what is a constrained funding environment.
"This fellowship will enable me to continue my research into identifying and validating novel transmission-blocking vaccines for malaria."
Dr Annie McDougall will use her fellowship to expand her research in preventing pre-eclampsia, one of the leading causes of maternal deaths globally.
After starting her career as a biomedical researcher, Dr McDougall changed career paths and completed a master's degree in public health before joining the global women’s and newborns health team at Burnet in 2021.
She wanted to help as many women as possible through her work and contribute to reducing the number of maternal and newborn deaths.
Every year more than 287,000 mothers and 2.3 million newborns die, due to complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. Almost all of these deaths are preventable.
Through Dr McDougall’s work in the Accelerating Innovation for Mothers (AIM) project, her team developed target product profiles that have been adopted by the WHO for pregnancy complications.
A target product profile is a strategic document outlining the characteristics of a new product, such as a drug or device, to address an unmet clinical need.
Her evidence synthesis work has also informed WHO guidelines for pregnant women.
Dr McDougall’s work led to Burnet establishing the PEARLS (Preventing pre-eclampsia: Evaluating AspiRin Low-dose regimens following risk Screening) trial, in collaboration with the international non-government organisation Concept Foundation, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, across Ghana, Kenya and South Africa.
The PEARLS trial will answer the WHO priority question of the optimal dose of aspirin required to prevent pre-eclampsia in high-risk women.
"I’m incredibly thankful for this opportunity," she said.
"This fellowship will allow me to continue to advance pre-eclampsia prevention.
"It will allow me to combine this critical evidence for new innovations to reach women in low- and –middle-income countries and deepen our partnerships globally to build a global initiative where we can support research and development and innovations for women."
Dr Rachel Sacks-Davis will use the fellowship to further her research into hepatitis C elimination among people with HIV.
“Thank you to Lady Potter and Burnet Institute for generously supporting our research, which I hope will continue to have major impacts on hepatitis C elimination in Australia and globally,” she said.
Dr Sacks-Davis completed her PhD at Burnet Institute about the social networks of people who inject drugs. A major finding was that close relationships of people who inject drugs were also the most important for hepatitis C transmission.
During her PhD, the first results were released from clinical trials of effective new hepatitis C treatments. As a result, her PhD findings were translated into mathematical models, testing whether delivery of the new treatments through social networks of people who inject drugs could prevent new infections by reducing the number of transmissions.
This changed the approach to treating people with hepatitis C who inject drugs and led to the adoption of a ‘treat all’ approach.
"This fellowship will allow me to continue my work on demonstrating the treatment as prevention effect in hepatitis C," Dr Sacks-Davis said.
“By showing the effectiveness of treatment as prevention in different country contexts, we can support further investment in other countries to work towards eliminating hepatitis C."
Burnet Director and CEO Professor Brendan Crabb congratulated all three fellowship recipients on their work.
"The work that Fiona, Annie and Rachel are doing is shifting the dial in global health, which is incredibly exciting,” he said.
"It shows that our researchers are part of the wider community and are invested in profoundly improving global health."