Award surprises UC medical researcher
Published by Communications and Development
16 April 2009
University of Canterbury biochemist Dr Steven Gieseg has been honoured for contributions made over more than a decade of research at the forefront of medical science.
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Dr Steven Gieseg |
Dr Gieseg was awarded the Blair-Curtius-Pfleiderer-Waschter Award for Pteridine Research at the close of the recent 28th International Winter-Workshop Clinical, Chemical and Biochemical Aspects of Pteridines in St Christoph/Arlberg in Austria.
The President of the International Society of Pteridinology, Professor Dietmar Fuchs (University of Innsbruck) said the award was presented to Dr Gieseg for his significant research contributions showing the properties of the antioxidant 7,8-dihydroneopterin which his research team studies in relation to heart disease.
Dr Gieseg said he had wanted to attend the meeting for the last 14 years and was fortunate to be able to accept the invitation this year thanks to a National Heart Foundation grant.
Dr Gieseg gave two talks during the week-long workshop and also a seminar at Innsbruck University. The award, named after the founders of the International Society of Pteridinology, came as a complete surprise to him.
“I knew they had an award at the end of the conference but had assumed it was either for a young investigator or postdoctoral student. I didn’t realise it was for researchers who had been around for a bit longer and made a significant contribution,” Dr Gieseg said.
“It’s a real boost in recognition that we’ve done some significant work over the years. It’s recognition for my laboratory, my students and our collaborations. In some ways I guess the award is saying ‘you guys are doing good work and you’re on the right track’ and encourages us to continue in that direction.”
In Dr Gieseg’s Free Radical Biochemistry Laboratory, a team of six postdoctoral students currently work with him studying how macrophages (a type of white blood cell) contribute to chronic disease.
“Our main focus is on heart disease where you get collections of cells full of cholesterol in the artery wall and the pterins are class compounds made by these white blood cells which they release during infection.
“We’ve shown that one of these pterins, 7,8-dihydroneopterin, is a very potent antioxidant that can stop the damage to the cholesterol and stop the damaged cholesterol killing the white blood cells and we’ve now linked what we’ve found in the test tube to what we’ve found in atherosclerosis plaque,” said Dr Gieseg, adding that some of this research he presented at the conference received great interest.
“The society has a lot of clinical researchers who look at pterins, mainly neopterin, as markers of the immune system being switched on in everything from heart disease, cancer, kidney rejection and tuberculosis while others study pterins from a biochemical point of view. My lab has positioned itself somewhere in the middle and looks at the interaction between the two.”
For further information please contact:
Maria De Cort
Communications Officer
University of Canterbury
Tel: +64 3 364 2072
maria.decort@canterbury.ac.nz