The Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research is proud to announce the 2025 recipients of our Safe Harbour Fellowships: Dr Rowan Sanderson and Dr Rui Hou.
Established in 2022, the Safe Harbour Fellowship Fund was created to nurture and empower the next generation of researchers. The Safe Harbour Fellowship provides up to three years of salary support to an outstanding Early- or Mid-Career Researcher, enabling them to continue their research and grow their career right here in Western Australia at the Perkins.
This year, the Perkins Safe Harbour Fellowship has been funded entirely through philanthropic donations, reflecting the generosity and belief of our supporters in the power of emerging research talent. Dr Rui Hou has been awarded this Fellowship.
Since 2024, funds raised by participants in the MACA Cancer 200 Ride for the Perkins have supported the Cancer 200 Perkins Safe Harbour Fellowship for cancer-related research. Dr Rowan Sanderson is the 2025 recipient of this award.
Together, Rowan and Rui join the growing cohort of Perkins Safe Harbour Fellows, who are advancing research across cancer, cardiovascular and metabolic disease, and genetic disorders.
Dr Rowan Sanderson
Uncovering the hidden stiffness of breast cancer
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women, with more than 20,000 Australians diagnosed each year. One of the things that makes breast cancer different from healthy tissue is that it feels much stiffer. Doctors have long used this stiffness to help detect tumours, both by touch and with specialised medical imaging.
Recently it has been shown that stiffness doesn’t just help us find cancer, but it may actually help the cancer grow, spread and resist treatments. However, we still do not fully understand the relationship between cancer cells surrounding tissue and stiffness. Current imaging tools either provide very detailed information over tiny areas or broader views without fine detail. This gap limits our ability to understand how mechanical changes influence cancer progression and impact treatments.
Dr Sanderson’s Cancer 200 Perkins Safe Harbour project will develop and apply a novel imaging technique, optical coherence elastography, to generate detailed three-dimensional maps of cancer stiffness, from cells through to whole tumours. By combining this approach with complementary laboratory tests, Rowan and his team will investigate how stiffness influences tumour behaviour and treatment response in breast cancer. The findings aim to improve our fundamental understanding of cancer progression and inform more effective treatment and risk assessment strategies.
Dr Rui Hou
Understanding your immune system’s secret language
The immune system is like a complex social network. Cells send messages to each other using tiny chemical messengers called cytokines. When this communication system goes wrong, it can lead to serious diseases like cancer, autoimmune disorders and life-threatening infections. In Australia, these immune-related illnesses affect millions of people and cost our healthcare system billions every year.
Scientists have developed some drugs that amplify or block these messengers, but they don’t always help patients and sometimes cause harmful side effects. The main problem is that we still don’t know enough about how these messengers travel through the body and what happens when the system breaks down.
Thanks to recent breakthroughs, we can now look at millions of individual cells at the same time to see how they’re communicating. But we’re still missing the big picture. We don’t have a complete guide showing which cells are sending which messages, where those messages go, and how this changes when someone gets sick.
Dr Hou’s Perkins Safe Harbour project will create the first complete map of immune system communication across the entire body. He’ll study both laboratory models and samples from real patients. Using powerful computer programs and large amounts of biological data, Rui and his team will track how immune messages move between cells and how disease disrupts these patterns.
Investing in research talent
The Safe Harbour Fellowships represent the Perkins continued commitment to investing in outstanding Early- and Mid-Career Researchers. By providing stable, multi-year salary support, the Fellowships allow emerging leaders to focus on bold, high-impact research.
Previous Safe Harbour Fellows include:
- Dr Joshua Clayton (2025-2028)
- Dr Qi Fang (2025-2028)
- Dr Rhonda Taylor (2024-2027)
- Dr Chuck Herring (2024-2027)
- Dr Olivier Clement (2023-2026)
If you’d like to support the Perkins Safe Harbour Fellowship program, you are invited to contact Shelley Mason (Senior Manager, Key Relationships) via [email protected] or on 0409 380 881 for a confidential conversation.
