Alchemy - Issue 27 | Page 23

Dr Giang Le, Professor Jonathan Baell, Dr Luigi Aurelio, Dr Romke Bron, Dr Simona Carbone, Professor Nigel Bunnet, Dr Nicholas Veldhuis, Dr Bim Graham, Dr Laura Edginton-Mitchell, Josh Conner, Dr Daniel Poole Professor Nigel Bunnett (Deputy Director, MIPS), who together with Dr Daniel Poole, also from MIPS, will lead the initial three-year research program, said gastrointestinal diseases are a major cause of human suffering. “There is no cure for many gastrointestinal diseases and current treatments are either inadequate or have major sideeffects. If we can understand the mechanisms that trigger these diseases we can go on to develop effective drugs to treat them,” Professor Bunnett said. “Monash possesses the expertise, technology and materials at its research facilities necessary to conduct drug discovery, research and preclinical pharmaceutical development activities into gastrointestinal diseases.” Professor Bunnett said the research program will build on work by MIPS to better understand the causes of disorders of gastrointestinal function and sensation and could potentially lead to powerful therapies for digestive and sensory diseases. “A major thrust of the work will be to make use of our expertise in nano-medicine to deliver drugs to the source of disease within the body,” he said. Dr Tetsuyuki Maruyama, is the General Manager of the Pharmaceutical Research Division at Takeda, said the alliance was the