AusHealth CureCell ceremony sees the awarding of seven $10k prizes – and one engagement ring!

AusHealth’s CureCell Awards ceremony was held in the Kent Town Hotel, Adelaide, where friends, family and academic powerbrokers gathered to celebrate as seven PhD students were each presented with trophies and $10,000.
The awards were created to help PhD students with living costs, and as such the cash prizes can be spent however they like.
Lachlan Staker – the winner of the SMART CRC CureCell Award – went public that he was going to spend his prize (and we think he said part of his prize!) on an engagement ring for his girlfriend, Ellen Solly. When Professor Simon Cool handed over the trophy to Lachlan, he insisted Ellen join them on stage for the presentation!

The winners:
Matt van der Burg (The University of Queensland): FLVCR2 as a novel gateway for brain therapeutics and glioblastoma treatment
Cate Cheney (SAHMRI), receiving the Pan Macedonian Federation of SA CureCell Award: Generation of a microbiome-oriented adjuvant therapy for patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia
Julia Leeflang (University of Adelaide): Engineering next-generation colorectal cancer treatments
Giáng Tuyết Phạm (Flinders University), receiving the Marine Bioproducts CRC CureCell Award for Marine Medical Biotech: A wound healing hydrogel based on plasma-assisted microalgae extract
Matteo Pitteri (The Florey Institute): Unlocking brain-penetrating antisense therapies for neurological diseases
Kelsy Prest (Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre): The clone claw: A novel platform for precise isolation and molecular profiling of rare MRD-resistant clones driving AML relapse
Lachlan Staker (University of Adelaide) receiving the SMART CRC CureCell Award: Dual action gene editing strategy for treating dominant negative or toxic-gain of function mutations.

AusHealth is a self-funded medical research charity based in Adelaide. In 2024, it donated $4.5 million to scientists developing new disease therapies, AI-powered clinical solutions and novel healthcare technologies.
Websites: curecell.org | aushealth.com.au