A message from your Director

It’s been a busy couple of weeks for me. Earlier this month, I travelled to Germany for the International Cytokine and Interferon Society’s annual meeting, held this year in Bamberg, a UNESCO world heritage centre in Bavaria. It’s a pleasant, touristy town, but I didn’t get to see very much of it, thanks to my busy conference schedule!

We heard all the latest information about cytokines from excellent speakers, and there were around 500 to 600 attendees.

Dr Daniel Gough won a young investigator award and gave an excellent talk. These awards are very competitive, as you can imagine - with 500 attendees there’s only one award so we were happy that he was acknowledged. Dr Tony Sadler also gave a well-received talk.

I then flew to Singapore, where I held a series of productive meetings. Firstly, I met with the Duke University National University of Singapore (Duke-NUS) Cancer Research Group, a meeting that was initiated largely by A/Prof Ron Firestein.

The Graduate Medical School in Singapore is a satellite campus of Duke University in the US and is closely connected clinically to the Singapore General Hospital, which is just across the road.

Whilst in Singapore, I also caught up with Aaron Irving, a former post-doc of mine, who is doing some excellent work in the Emerging Infectious Diseases group of the same university.

I then met with an A*STAR (Agency for Science, Technology and Research) Institute called the Experimental Therapeutics Centre, which was set up to advance and accelerate drug discovery in Singapore.

The ETC was very interested in what the Hudson is doing, particularly in the cancer and infectious disease space. As a result of this meeting, we signed a confidentiality agreement.

The ETC will now look at developing small molecule drugs that affect targets we’ve identified for different forms of cancer and infectious diseases.

They’re interested collaborating here in Australia, including conducting clinical trials in the MHTP’s new Translational Research Facility.

I look forward to seeing where this exciting, international collaboration takes the Hudson.

Best wishes,

Bryan Williams

Director, The Hudson Institute