Congratulations to recent PhD graduate, Dr Craig McIntosh.
Craig is a member of the Molecular Therapies Research group which is led by Professors Steve Wilton and Sue Fletcher at the Centre Molecular Medicine and Innovative Therapeutics (CMMIT) at Murdoch University.
His thesis title is: Antisense Oligonucleotide-Mediated Therapeutic Strategies for Neurodegenerative Repeat Expansion Diseases.
This project investigated the potential of molecular gene patches for the treatment of a class of neurodegenerative diseases. It showed that application of these patches could remove a mutation that directly leads to a rare disease called spinocerebellar ataxia type 3.
Additionally, the thesis provides a systematic approach for the clinical development of the molecular patches.
Craig was the City of Perth’s joint winner in the 2020 Business Events Perth Aspire Awards, sharing this honour with Kristin Ham, a CMMIT Research Officer.
In his student years, Craig had four first author research papers published and a first author review paper.
Following the conferral of his PhD, he has taken up a postdoctoral position within CMMIT and the Perron Institute. He is currently dividing his time between research for industry partner Sarepta Therapeutics and applying antisense technology to rare genetic and acquired diseases, with a particular focus on neurodegenerative and neuromuscular diseases.