2OO9 – 2O1O - Faculty of Dentistry - University of Otago

Research Highlights
Grace Lee with her winning poster.
IADR Colgate Poster Competition 2009
The New Zealand Section of the International Association for Dental Research (IADR) Colgate
Student Poster Competition, held in 2009, produced two winners who went on to compete at
the ANZ Divisional meeting held later that year in Wuhan, China. They were:
Philippa Greer – Expression of Cytokeratins in Odontogenic Tumours. Supervised by Haizal Hussaini,
Ms Lynda Horne, Mr Norman Firth and Associate Professor Alison Rich.
Nurul Haji Ishak – Revealing the Genomic Secrets of Streptococcus salivarius Strain Mia.
Supervised by Associate Professor Mary Cullinan, Professor John Tagg and Dr Nick Heng.
IADR Colgate Poster Competition 2010
Winners of the 2010 Colgate Student Poster Competition were:
Jessica Po – Within – and between – individual variability in the natural human chewing pace.
Supervised by Professor Mauro Farella.
Michael Zhao – Evaluation of an in-vitro wounding model for human gingival fibroblast. Supervised
by Dr Dawn Coates and Professor Gregory Seymour.
In 2010, Division Travel Awards were introduced, funded by the ANZ Division. These were
awarded to:
Michelle Kang – Students’ perceptions of educational environment and future professional work.
Supervised by Dr Lyndie Foster Page and Dr Vivienne Anderson.
Grace Lee – Inhibiting drug efflux pumps relevant to fungal infections and cancer. Supervised by Dr
Kyoko Niimi, Dr Ann Holmes and Dr Mikhail Keniya.
All winners competed at the IADR ANZ Divisional Meeting held in Kiama (New South Wales)
from 27-29 September 2010. Grace, a 4th-year BDS student, went on to be awarded the Junior
IADR/Unilever Hatton ANZ Division Award.
Grace conducted her research while on a summer studentship under the supervision of Drs
Ann Holmes and Kyoko Niimi from the Molecular Microbiology Research Group of the Sir
John Walsh Research Institute. The project involved developing a fluorescence-based assay to
study the efflux kinetics of specific transporters which contribute to the development of drug
resistance in fungal infections and cancer. The optimised assay will be valuable for screening
for clinically safe drug efflux pump inhibitors that can be used in combination with existing
antifungal agents and cancer drugs to overcome drug resistance.
The Divisional Award provided Ms Lee with a travel grant to present her research in the Hatton
Competition at the 89th General Session of the IADR held in San Diego, California in March 2011.
60 FACULTY OF DENTISTRY RESEARCH REPORT 2009-2010