Helena Abolins-Thompson is one of three researchers to win funding at the recent inaugural Maori Early Career Development in Cancer Research Awards.
The 23-year-old started her PhD at the University of Otago (Wellington) this year and planned to use a modern sequencing technique that would break each tumour sample down into individual cells, enabling her to look at the genetic sequence of each cell.
It was a form of tumour analysis which had not been used widely in New Zealand, she said.
She planned to work with her supervisor, Dr Kirsty Danielson, and Dr Bridget Simonson at Boston’s Broad Institute, in the United States.
She said the institute had the equipment and knowledge to find the type of data she was looking for, and was also invested in putting indigenous health at the forefront of research.
"It’s quite a new technique that’s been developed. There’s heaps of big institutes over in the US that have done it, but nothing has been done at all in a Maori population.
"So it’s kind of the first of its kind [research] using that patient cohort."
Ms Abolins-Thompson said she was "pretty ecstatic" about the opportunity.
"I never could have expected that I would actually have been a recipient of the funding — it’s pretty amazing. Having had whanau impacted by cancer myself, the cause is very near and dear to my heart."
"Ovarian and breast cancer are cancers that Maori woman in particular are disproportionately affected by.
She said she would also be examining cardiovascular disease samples from Maori women.
"Cardiovascular disease is New Zealand’s biggest cause of death. It’s also often a co-morbidity with cancer, the two alongside each other."
The Maori Cancer Research Leadership Group and the Cancer Society of New Zealand jointly provided the scholarship funding to address Maori health inequities.
The other two scholarship winners were Waikato Hospital clinical haematologist and Auckland University PhD student Dr Myra Ruka, and Auckland-based researcher and Te Whare Wananga o Awanuiarangi PhD student Irene Kereama-Royal.
