Honouring Harvey Coates

Professor Harvey Coates at his final Earbus Foundation clinic

Earbus Foundation is proud to announce a 4-year partnership with Griffith University in Queensland to create the Harvey Coates Research Scholarship honouring our patron Professor Harvey Coates AO. Earbus support will fund a PhD student to conduct Otitis media research in Griffith University’s Institute of Glycomics on the Gold Coast.

Research will focus on development of a new vaccine to prevent middle ear infection in Australian Indigenous children. This project will expand a successful pilot program which developed a novel 'pilot conjugate vaccine' that targets two of the main bacteria that cause middle ear infection, namely, Moraxella catarrhalis (Mcat) and Non-typeable Haemophilus influenzae (NTHi).

The unique pilot conjugate vaccine includes a carbohydrate antigen from Mcat and a protein from NTHi. Encouragingly, the research found mice injected with this novel vaccine made antibodies that kill strains of both bacteria. This was recently published in the scientific journal Vaccine (2019).

The Research Scholarship acknowledges Professor Coates’ lifelong commitment to Aboriginal Ear Health.