Marsden Fund Grant

The APOBEC3 research team at Massey University led by Professor Vyacheslav Filichev, Emeritus Professor G. B. Jameson and Dr Elena Harjes has been awarded a prestigious Marsden Fund Grant from the Royal Society Te Apārangi to advance the development of novel strategies to suppress cancer evolution and drug resistance. The project focuses on targeting the DNA-mutating enzymes APOBEC3A and APOBEC3B, which drive therapeutic resistance in a wide range of cancers. The Marsden programme includes collaboration with Thomas Fallon (Adelaide University, Australia) on the application of shape-shifting bullvalene scaffolds to develop adaptive molecular inhibitors, and with Reuben S. Harris (UT San Antonio, USA) on the biological and translational aspects of APOBEC3-driven mutagenesis.

Deaminet 2026

As part of strengthening international collaborations, Professor Vyacheslav Filichev and Emeritus Professor G. B. Jameson recently attended Deaminet 2026, a leading international meeting on cytidine deaminases that was held In Palm Springs, USA, Jan 21–23 2026. Professor Filichev delivered an oral presentation highlighting the team’s recent success in developing first-in-class inhibitors of APOBEC3A, attracting strong interest from the global deaminase research community.

New students

The APOBEC3 team is also pleased to welcome two new students: Beiqiao He, who will commence PhD studies, and Dwiki Kurniawati, who will begin MSc research.

Welcome to MSc student Hayden Mansfield who will be supervised by Mark Waterland.

Welcome to two new PhD students: Szofia Schonberger and Paridhi Chittora who are being supervised by Catherine Whitby and Tyson Dais. Szofia is funded by the Riddet Institute Centre of Research Excellence and Paridhi is funded by the MacDiarmid Institute Centre of Research Excellence.

Congratulations

Congratulations to PhD student Qayyum Shehzad who presented some of his research in a seminar at the Australasian Colloid and Interface Symposium in Adelaide in February. Qayyum's research into plant proteins at interfaces is funded by the Riddet Centre of Research Excellence. His supervisor, Catherine Whitby, also gave a presentation at the symposium, served as one of the judges in the poster session at the conference, and was part of a panel discussing diversity and equity issues with early career researchers.