At a time when the focus on health and medical research has never been greater, 32 exciting new projects across the Flinders medical precinct have received funding in Flinders Foundation’s annual Health Seed Grant Round.

Read more about some of these exciting projects here – or view the full list below.

2020 Flinders Foundation Health Seed Grant Round Recipients

Dr Anya Arthurs – How do circular RNAs in the placenta contribute to pregnancy complications?

Professor Gregory Bain – Development of Deep Learning Algorithms for Prediction of Fracture Detection, Classification and Characteristics for Proximal Humerus Fractures: Does the Computer Outperform Surgeons?

Professor Malcolm Battersby – Improving Access to Psychological Therapies enhanced by mobile phone (IAPT-m) and family engagement: a randomised trial of people presenting to the Emergency Department with suicidal behaviour

Professor Peter Catcheside – Establishing advanced new brain signal capture and processing methods for detecting hospital-noise induced impacts on sleep and health

Associate Professor Sarah Cohen-Woods – Communicating the science: can epigenetic education improve intentions and efficacies?

Professor Marcello Costa – Role of neuropeptides in the motor complexes in the guinea pig colon

Dr Nicholas Eyre – Identification of inhibitors of SARS-CoV-2 non-structural protein (nsp3/nsp4) interaction as future antiviral therapeutics

Dr Joanne Flavel – Examining regional health inequalities in Australia and social determinants of health

Doctor Toby Freeman – What are good practice examples from countries in the Western Pacific region that ‘punch above their weight' for life expectancy relative to national income?

Associate Professor Anand Ganesan – SGLT2 inhibition before cardiac surgery - a mechanistic randomised trial

Professor Jonathan Gleadle – Is PAPP-A2 the father of Compensatory Renal Hypertrophy?

Dr Ashley Hopkins – Advancing the precision use of medicines in lung cancer treatment: Big data to inform the impacts of gut microbiota affecting medicines on clinical outcomes

Associate Professor Kate Laver – ‘Taking charge' after a diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment: does early intervention change the trajectory?

Dr Sam Lehman – The Impact of First-Line CT Coronary Angiography versus Standard Invasive Coronary Angiography for Suspected Acute Coronary Syndrome Patients with Low Level Troponin Elevations; A Randomised Pilot Study.

Dr Lauren Lines – Identifying the nature and scope of Australian nurses' and midwives' safeguarding practices.

Professor David Lynn – Does COVID-19 infection lead to long-lasting perturbations of the immune system?

Dr Alyce Martin – Understanding the mechanisms by which gut-derived serotonin affects the enteric nervous system and gastrointestinal function

Dr Dusan Matusica – Development of neuron-on-chip biosensor surface for empirical discrimination of chronic pain types

Associate Professor Robyn Meech – Developing selective bile acid receptor modulators (SBARMs): has nature done the work for us?

Dr Sumudu Narayana – Towards evidence-based guidelines for hepatocellular carcinoma screening in Indigenous Australians

Professor Janni Petersen – Cancer Cell proliferation: towards defining mechanisms of TOR complex 2 signalling

Dr Chris Rissel – Cultural training models in Indigenous health and impact on health outcomes

Professor Claire Roberts – Assessment of PFAS toxicity in human placenta

Professor Geraint Rogers – Predicting severe systemic infections in patients receiving myelosuppressive chemotherapy: a basis for targeted intervention

Dr Paul Secombe – Exploring Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Attitudes to Organ Donation: A Pilot Study

Professor Justine Smith – Human Retinal Organoid Model for Studying New Treatments of Ocular Toxoplasmosis

Professor Michael Sorich – Machine learning for personalised prediction of anti-cancer treatment outcomes

Dr Jacqueline Stephens – The role of Aboriginal Health Workers and Practitioners in the early detection of ear disease and hearing impairment among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children

Dr Alexander Sweetman – A novel software-assisted pathway to manage insomnia in Australian general practice

Associate Professor Erin Symonds – Non-invasive assessment of treatment outcomes in patients with gastrointestinal cancers

Dr Moira Walsh – Intergenerational and multilingual understandings of mental health for people from refugee backgrounds

Associate Professor Robert Wilcox – MRI, nigrosome-1, and diagnosis of Parkinson's disease