News Story

Professor Hogg won the award for devising a drug that could stop tumours by "starving” them to death. Known as GSAO, it stops cancer cells from proliferating by preventing the growth of new blood vessels. The drug is in clinical trials with Cancer Research UK.

Professor Hogg has also pioneered a test that reveals whether conventional chemotherapy is effective by telling, within a day or two of the commencement of therapy, whether cancer cells are dying. This is much faster than current methods, which can take weeks or months to tell whether therapy is effective. The drug is being developed by Covidien Limited. Professor Hogg heads the UNSW Cancer Research Centre in the Faculty of Medicine.

The NSi Inventor of the Year awards reward innovative technologies of UNSW researchers and students that benefit the community and the environment. This is the first year of the awards, which carry a total prize pool of $20,000. One hundred and twenty leaders from business, media and research organisations attended the 23 April awards event. The gala evening was held at UNSW’s John Niland Scientia Building and emceed by James O’Loghlin, host of ABC TV’s The New Inventors.

Congratulations also to Professor Levon Khachigian was one of eleven UNSW inventors short-listed as finalists across four inventor award categories – biomedicine, science and engineering, the environment, and information and communication technology. The winners of each award category were nominees for the overall Inventor of the Year award.

Solar cell inventor Professor Stuart Wenham - a world-leading solar cell inventor who heads UNSW’s ARC Photovoltaic Centre of Excellence - won the top prize for his role in inventing eight suites of solar cell technologies that have been licensed to solar cell makers around the world.

Read the full story on the NSi website