Print this page 
$100,000 Foundation Boost
Posted 16 November 2009
The Clive and Vera Ramaciotti Foundations have announced that researchers at PHI will receive a funding boost of $100,000. The Foundations are some of Australia’s leading private contributors to medical research.
Dr Karla Hutt, NHMRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Ovarian Biology Laboratory, has received a grant of $50,000 for her project titled “When good eggs go bad: Identification of genes associated with the loss of oocyte quality with age.” Karla’s research is of particular importance in understanding how female fertility declines with age.
Women aged over 35 years experience greater difficulty in getting pregnant than younger women and one key aspect in the decline in a woman’s fertility can be the healthy potential of her eggs. Immature eggs are stored in a woman’s ovaries for many years. By the time a woman reaches 35 years, fewer and fewer of these stored eggs have the capacity to successfully mature and be fertilised to start a healthy pregnancy. The new funding will help Karla explain some of the genetic causes that underly these fertility problems in older women.
The Clive & Vera Ramaciotti Foundations also made a substantial contribution of $50,000 towards the purchase of a new technology platform at PHI, a GE Typhoon high performance gel and blot imager. Professor Matthew Gillespie, PHI Director and leader of the Bone, Joint & Cancer Laboratory, said that the new molecular imaging scanner was the most useful and versatile instrument of its type. The imaging machine is used by leading research laboratories around the world. Professor Gillespie said that securing the new technology for PHI would advance translation research and drug discovery.