A long overdue post. Together with our collaborators we were successful in several funding rounds, which will help us progress some exciting projects.
We got awarded two grants to further our projects on colorectal cancer (CRC) in collaboration with Rachel Purcell and Frank Frizelle at Department of Surgery, University of Otago. We were granted a Maurice and Phyllis Paykel Trust Grant to investigate how to harness the gut microbiome to predict the response to radiotherapy in rectal cancer. In addition, we were awarded an Health Research Council grant to further study the association of CRC molecular subtypes and the gut microbiome.
In another stream, we, together with Anna Pilbrow also at the University of Otago, were awarded a Lottery Health Research Grant to predict disease progression in heart patients based on the identification of novel noncoding RNAs.
Furthermore, while not funded just yet, we nevertheless progressed to the second round with a Marsden Fund Council Award and the results are still to come in.