MURDOCH postgraduate student Louisa MacDonald has won one of only two inaugural $1200 Medical and Health Research Infrastructure Council (MHRIC) travel awards.

She received her prize at the ASMR (Australian Society for Medical Research) Medical Research Week gala dinner held at the Fremantle Town Hall recently.

Ms MacDonald, of the Division of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences (DVBS), carries out the bulk of her research at the Murdoch-based State Agricultural Biotechnology Centre (SABC).

She said she would use the prize money to attend an international conference during the next 12 months.

Ms MacDonald, whose studies target drug-binding sites in single-celled organisms - such as the parasites giardia and cryptosporidium - began as a research assistant at Murdoch three years ago, and commenced her PhD in 1999.

“Cryptosporidium is the same bug thought to have caused chaos with the Sydney water supply two years ago,” she said.

“Nobody knows how the drugs used to combat these waterborne diseases bind to the proteins,” she added, saying that discovering this was one of her primary goals.

Ms MacDonald’s research is carried out through the Western Australian Biotechnology Research Institute.

She is also carrying out collaborative research with University of Western Australia protein chemists Matthew and Jackie Wilce, aided by a Murdoch/GlaxoSmithKline scholarship.