02 9541 3500ECPM 2024 Lock and key competition
Congratulations to Stephanie Hedditch!
We were thrilled to announce Stephanie Hedditch as the winner of the Lock and Key Competition at this year’s East Coast Proteins Meeting (ECPM)! The ECPM is held at the Opal Cove Resort in Coffs Harbour. This conference is held jointly every two years by the Sydney and Queensland Protein Groups of the Australian Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB).
Take a look at the short video as we celebrate Stephanie’s journey to the prize!
Prof Barry Slim was there to provide support with every attempt to unlock the magic box containing the winning cheque for $1000. A big thank you to all the participants who made this competition a success. We look forward to the next ECPM with more groundbreaking discoveries in the future!
About our winner….
Stephanie Hedditch is a student at the University of Wollongong, Molecular Horizons, working under the supervision of Dr Aidan Grosas.
Stephanie’s research group is dedicated to tackling the critical issue of antimicrobial resistance, focusing on the structural investigation of the primary efflux pump MtrCDE from Neisseria Gonorrhoeae. This pump plays a crucial role in the pathogens resistance by extruding diverse antimicrobial compounds before they can kill the cell posing a significant threat to public health. Our project aims to produce, purify and reconstitute the MtrCDE complex and use cryo-electron microscopy to elucidate it’s structure. Doing so will pave the way for the development of inhibitory compounds to block the pumps action thereby contributing to the fight against multi drug resistant pathogens.
This award will significantly bolster our efforts by providing essential resources and assisting with the substantial costs associated with the highly innovative technique cryo-EM.
The award will be spent on the cryo-electron microscopes as this technique incurs significant costs but is pivotal for solving the structure of MtrCDE.
For more information please contact us.