Asia Pacific 3MT 2020: Watch SA university finalists share their Three Minute theses
Want to sound like a genius on the topic of gene therapy, PTSD and waste management? Train your brain in just a few minutes with these brilliant, quick and inspiring talks from young SA researchers who have won a place in the 2020 Asia Pacific Three Minute Thesis competition.
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Around the world, six people with diabetic foot ulcers have to have part of their lower leg amputated every three minutes.
That’s the same amount of time Khalia Primer has to tell the world about her gene therapy research that she hopes will eventually save many patients from that fate.
The PhD candidate won first prize in the University of Adelaide’s Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition, as well as the people’s choice and student choice awards.
Participants have to distil three or more years of painstaking research into talks of just 180 seconds.
Along with the winners of the UniSA and Flinders University competitions, Ms Primer will progress to the Asia-Pacific 3MT Competition on October 1, when all of the finalists will vie to win a $5000 research grant.
The gene therapy to heal the ulcers has “a long way to go” before it can be used in patients.
But Ms Primer said preclinical results showed the concept was worth exploring, considering there were no effective therapies to keep the “blood vessel builders” alive for wound repair.
She said high blood-sugar levels in diabetics distracted or disabled a gene called PDK4, which normally shut down mitochondria – the powerhouse of cells – to save oxygen for wound repair.
“I’m creating a gene therapy that will increase the amounts of PDK4 in our blood-vessel builders as they enter the wound environment,” she said. “That extra PDK4 will act as a reminder to these cells to shut down their mitochondria, even if there’s heaps of blood sugar around to distract them.”
Ms Primer, 23, from Cleve on the Eyre Peninsula, decided she wanted to study cell-signalling pathways, biochemistry and protein interactions when she attended a student night at SAHMRI.
“It can definitely be difficult to wrap your head around all the different interactions but I love it,” she said.
“It’s like a little puzzle and I have a lot of fun trying to work out how different things interact and how that changes in different disease contexts.
“It’s a real fun challenge for me.”
She said it was a “massive surprise” to win the Adelaide University competition because she had been so impressed by all of the other entrants’ videos but then “they kept saying my name again and again”.
UniSA winner Gabriela Dias Guimaraes wowed judges with a proposal for a new way to reduce construction waste.
“My hope is that we can minimise waste by informing the designer about the actual environmental impact of their decisions,” she said.
“This will allow professionals in the construction industry to feel accountable for the waste they generate.”
Flinders University winner Alex Canty is bringing a new perspective to post-traumatic stress disorder.
The competition enables contestants to hone their communication skills, receive international peer review, and gain skills surrounding the presentation of their research to a wider audience.