Congratulations to CRCBID PhD student, Con Consulato, and Dr Danielle Skopeta, from the University of Wollongong, who recently won the student section of UoW’s Trailblazer competition.

Trailblazer is designed to reward innovative ideas and early-stage research that may offer potential benefit the community, industry or business, as well as generate a financial return.

Con’s research is focused on creating a different library of sugar amino acids (SAA) to join to peptides to make potential tracers. In the first instance he is using somatostatin as his peptide target to modify and improve its characteristics as a PET tracer.  Somatostatin receptors are found in endocrine tumors and several other human tumours, and radio-labelled somatostatins are important tools for imaging these receptors.  The research co-supervised by Dr Skropeta and Dr Andrew Katsifis, from ANSTO.

Con competed in the National Final of Trailblazer, which involved finalists from each of the six participant universities.

Student winner Consulato Cara (left) is pictured with Mark Egerton (Fisher Adams Kelly) and UOW’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor Judy Raper.  Image courtesy Sean Maguire/Uni of Wollongong