The latest NHMRC grants will fund brain stimulation treatment for tinnitus, and novel otitis media therapies including gel medication to prevent repeat grommet surgery.
The slow-release gel-based medicine, delivered as a single dose at the time of a child’s first grommet surgery, aims to target persistent bacteria that hide in the biofilm in their ears and eradicate underlying infection.
A third grant will fund precision medicine for chronic suppurative otitis media using bacteriophages, natural predators of bacteria which are everywhere including the nose, skin and gut.
The research projects will share in $274 million granted to 223 researchers and their teams through the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Ideas Grants scheme. Minister for Health and Aged Care Mr Mark Butler announced recipients on 17 December 2024.
Flinders University Professor Raj Shekhawat, Dean of Research in the College of Education, Psychology and Social Work, will receive $2.23 million for his novel tinnitus management project combining brain stimulation and hearing aids with genetic and epigenetic biomarkers.
“This research proposal aims to investigate the use of HD-tDCS (high definition transcranial direct current stimulation) and innovative hearing aid programming to manage tinnitus and develop personalised treatment,” he said.
“Successful outcomes could revolutionise tinnitus treatment globally, offering lasting relief and improving clinical care practices.”
Prof Shekhawat has undertaken preliminary studies into the effectiveness of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) in treating tinnitus. He has been investigating if a form of non-invasive stimulation of specific areas of the brain can suppress tinnitus for an extended period.
Some participants experienced a suppression of ringing in their ears but only for a few hours or up to a few days. Now he will investigate whether high definition tDCS can reduce loudness and annoyance of the condition more effectively and for a longer period.
The stimulation treatment – which is non-invasive and painless – uses small electrodes placed on the head to deliver current flows to parts of the brain.
Australian Tinnitus Consortium
Prof Shekhawat is leading the research in collaboration with the Bionics institute, Melbourne and The University of Sydney.
Professor of Meniere disease and Neuroscience at The University of Sydney’s Kolling Institute, Jose Antonio Lopez-Escamez, said the grant was the result of a joint venture to create an Australian Tinnitus Consortium combining academia and industry expertise to bring advanced precision medicine to patients with tinnitus.
“My group will participate in this five-year grant that includes two clinical trials and we will perform the genomic studies to search for tinnitus bio markers,” he told HPA.
Gel to target bacterial biofilm
Senior Research Fellow at The University of Western Australia, Dr Ruth Thornton, will receive $1.39 million for her Blitz-OM project to make a one-drop anti-biofilm medicine to treat recurrent and chronic otitis media (OM), preventing repeat grommet surgery.
Dr Thornton from the Wesfarmers Centre of Vaccines and Infectious Diseases at The Kids Research Institute Australia, said almost every child would suffer OM by their second birthday, with one in four experiencing chronic infections that require surgery to insert grommets.
Up to half of children who receive grommets will require further surgery due to repeat infections caused by persistent bacteria that survive in the biofilm in their ears. When hidden in biofilms, bacteria are highly resistant to antibiotics.
Dr Thornton will lead a team of researchers from The Kids, UWA and CSIRO to develop the slow-release gel-based medicine, delivered as a single dose at the time of a child’s first grommet surgery, to target the bacterial biofilm and eradicate the underlying infection.
“In this project we are developing this product so it will be able to be given during surgery, where we expect it to break down the biofilm, allowing antibiotics to work and preventing the need for repeat grommet surgery,” Dr Thornton said.
“Doing this at the time of surgery would also mean parents wouldn’t need to give their child the standard care of eardrops twice daily for five days following their child’s operation – a process that can be difficult, painful, and lead to non-compliance.”
OM treatment using bacteriophages
Director of Research in the Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery at The University of Adelaide, Professor Sarah Vreugde, will receive $1.99 million to develop a novel precision medicine approach for chronic suppurative otitis media.
“Chronic otitis media (runny ears) in Aboriginal Australians is a significant problem with rates that are amongst the highest in the world,” she said.
“In this project we will first isolate the relevant bacteria that cause this disease in various communities and define which bacteria are responsible for this disease. We will then develop a treatment for this disease using bacteriophages, i.e. viruses of bacteria and test their safety and effectiveness in the lab and in vivo.
“We are already developing the treatment but need to identify the exact bacteria that are culprits of the disease,” Prof Vreugde told HPA. “In the meantime, we are developing phage treatments for bacteria that are known to cause chronic otitis media in general; such as pseudomonas aeruginosa and staphylococcus aureus.”
Once her team has collected the bacteria, researchers will test bacteriophages for their action against specific strains that cause infection in the communities.
“Bacteriophages are the natural predators of bacteria and the most abundant biological entity on the planet. They are everywhere including in your nose, skin, gut and we isolate them from environmental sources such as wastewater through a collaboration with SAWater,” she said.
“Bacteriophages need to be grown in the bacteria they can infect; we have a large library of bacteriophages targeting various pathogens and we can grow them in those bacteria and purify them for therapy.”
The team is running a human clinical trial testing efficacy and safety of bacteriophages in chronic rhinosinusitis, the first human clinical trial of its kind worldwide for this type of infection. Patients have been treated with bacteriophages in the past with promising results, she said.
“This grant is a game-changer for advancing such therapies for this condition. We will be able to find out which are the culprits, whether they circulate between members of various communities, whether they differ between communities, and we will develop bacteriophage treatments for the specific bacteria that cause the infection,” Prof Vreugde said.
“We will do extensive safety and efficacy testing in preclinical studies to make sure the therapy is safe and develop the best protocols for administering to patients.”
Funds for child hearing health registry
In May 2024, Associate Professor Valerie Sung from the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute received an Emerging Leadership NHMRC Investigator Grant of $1.42 million to investigate population approaches for prevention, diagnosis and management of childhood deafness.
“Deaf and hard of hearing children experience many life challenges and unanswered questions about their future despite early diagnosis and medical advances,” she said.
“My fellowship aims to improve prevention, diagnosis and management of hearing loss for all Australian children, using a national child hearing registry that links routinely collected data from different hearing services and large research studies, together with collaborations with families with lived experience.”
A/Prof Sung said the grant would support her research salary and some of her research studies for the next five years, starting next year (2025-2029). “Without this grant, I have no funding to support my research time, so this is a great relief to be able to continue my research,” she said.
The grant will fund her time for the work to develop the Australian National Child Hearing Health Outcomes Registry (ANCHOR).
“ANCHOR’s vision is to give all children who are deaf or hard of hearing the opportunities to live healthy, fulfilled lives,” A/Prof Sung told HPA. “ANCHOR’s mission is to collect and connect child hearing health information into a national child deafness data system and research platform to drive better care, diagnosis, prognosis, and prevention.”
The grant will also fund her work in establishing the best ways to screen for congenital cytomegalovirus infection (cCMV), the most common infectious cause of childhood deafness.
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