About the Event

Invest and Trade Western Australia invites you to join Investment & Trade Commissioner for North East Asia Mr Michael Sharp to connect with two of the States leading experts in rare diseases, Professor Steve Wilton and Professor Anthony Akkari.

Rare diseases do not recognise international borders and hence national and international coordination, and collaboration are essential.

Professor Wilton and Professor Akkari pioneered a novel strategy using antisense oligomers (gene patches) that redirect processing of defective gene messages. This intervention can by-pass amenable disease-causing mutations and produce functional dystrophin isoforms that slow disease progression.

Event details:

Dress code: Business Casual

Professor Steve Wilson:

Professor Steve Wilton AO FAHMS is the Director of the Perron Institute, Perth’s oldest private medical research institute. He is also the Foundation Chair in Molecular Therapies and the Deputy Director of the Personalised Medicine Centre (PMC), Murdoch University. A recognised early pioneer in the use of antisense oligomers (ASOs) to treat Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), his team designed three US FDA approved exon-skipping drugs that restore functional dystrophin expression in common mutations causing DMD.

His Molecular Therapy Laboratory, co-led by Dr May Aung-Htut, is currently developing a pipeline of bespoke ASO treatments for individuals with other rare inherited conditions that arise from amenable mutations.

His DMD work has been recognized with numerous awards and invitations to speak at national and international conferences. He was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2021 and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences in 2024.

Professor Anthony Akkari:

Professor Anthony Akkari is a pharmaco-geneticist and neuromuscular disease geneticist with over 30 years of research experience, including 18 years in the pharmaceutical industry. He is a recognised leader in the integration of genetics and pharmacogenetics into drug development, having held senior translational research roles at GlaxoSmithKline, Eli Lilly, and Black Swan Biotechnology Holdings, where he currently serves as Chief Scientific Officer. 

Internationally recruited to establish and co-lead the Motor Neuron Disease Genetics and Therapeutics team at the Perron Institute and Murdoch University, Professor Akkari also holds the position of Foundation Chair of Industrial Pharmacogenetics at Murdoch. He was appointed Deputy Director of the Personalised Medicine Centre in 2022 and became Director in 2023. He also holds adjunct professorships at Duke University and the University of Western Australia.

 If you have further questions, please contact ITWAWorldExpo@jtsi.wa.gov.au