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Thursday 21 June 2018 2:06pm

The Edgar Diabetes and Obesity Research Centre (EDOR) Director has been awarded the Dunedin School of Medicine Research Development Investment prize, and several EDOR members have successfully secured research funds from the New Zealand Health Research Council (HRC).

Professor Rachael Taylor, the Karitane Fellow in Early Childhood Obesity and Director of EDOR, received the Research Development Investment prize at the recent Dunedin School of Medicine Health Research Excellence Awards.  The funds will be used as part of an international collaboration investigating the role of sleep in child health and wellbeing.

Professor Sally McCormick, an EDOR member in the Department of Biochemistry, has been awarded $1,185,496 from the HRC for a project investigating new receptors for lipoprotein(a).  The presence of this form of cholesterol in the blood predisposes people to heart attacks.  The project aims to investigate ways that Lp(a) can be removed from the blood by specific receptors, and will lay the foundation for developing novel Lp(a)-lowering therapies.

Dr Moana Theodore, EDOR member and Co-Director of the National Centre for Lifecourse Research (NCLR), is co-investigator in a HRC-funded Rangahau Hauora Māori project called Te Hao Nui.  This research, led by NCLR investigator Mr Andrew Sporle and awarded $1,198,494, uses Big Data to create the world's largest and most comprehensive indigenous longitudinal study.

Dr Lisa Te Morenga is a named investigator and project leader in the DIET HRC-funded research programme ($4,879,689), awarded to lead investigator Professor Cliona Ni Mhurchu at the University of Auckland.  This 5-year programme of research will investigate strategies to support healthier diets across four different domains: at an individual level, government level, food industry level and public health level, including testing the impact of New Zealand's health star ratings on packaged foods.

Read more about these projects

HRC-funded project/programme descriptions

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