Dr Alex Eustace receives funding for breast cancer research under Health Research Board awards

Dublin City University has welcomed funding awards of €800k announced today (Friday, June 14th) by the Health Research Board as part of an €8million investment in new health research.

Dr Alex Eustace, of the National Institute for Cellular Biotechnology at DCU, has been awarded for his breast cancer research which examines how changes in genes which occur in a patients’ breast cancer might be used to predict whether specific patients could benefit from a new group of drugs.

The aim of this project is to try and select the 'right women' for the 'right treatment', reducing the need for broad spectrum chemotherapy which is associated with damaging side effects. The HRB emerging investigator awards are designed to create a pipeline of researcher leaders who will improve health, influence clinical practice and inform health policy across a broad range of areas.

Welcoming the announcement, Professor Brian MacCraith, DCU President, said:

This award is a welcome endorsement of the quality of health-related research at DCU’s National Institute for Cellular Biotechnology. Dr Eustace is conducting important research that has the potential to create life-saving advances in the treatment of breast cancer. This work aligns with DCU’s mission to ‘transform lives and societies’ through our world-class research activities.

According to Dr Darrin Morrissey, Chief Executive at the HRB says,

We want this investment to advance the skills and expertise of researchers, while at the same time generating research outcomes that have strong potential to impact on people’s health, patient care or health policy.

In a highly competitive process, a total of 11 awards were selected by an international panel from 45 eligible applications. They address a broad range of health areas including Breast Cancer, Type II diabetes, stroke, osteoarthritis, self-harm, sepsis, TB, clinical guidelines, gender differences in cardiovascular disease, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.

Dr Morrissey continues;

The HRB is committed to training and to enhancing career paths for people across all disciplines in health research. This programme of funding will ensure that researchers can take the next steps in their research career as independent investigators, demonstrate leadership potential and build a complementary support team. All successful applicants in winning funding demonstrated a strong research vision and identified a career path beyond the duration of the funding award which is very promising for the future of health research in Ireland.