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Tracking the spread of deadly diseases
Dr Kathryn (Kat) Holt, Bio21 Institute, The University of Melbourne
With the support of her L’Oréal For Women in Science Fellowship, Kat will be using the same techniques to understand how antibiotic-resistant bacteria spread in Melbourne hospitals. Are people catching these superbugs in hospital, or are they bringing the bugs into hospital with them? Can we give the intensive care clinicians early warning of a drug-resistant bacteria in their patients?
Kathryn (Kat) has been a pioneer ever since she became the first student at the University of Western Australia to undertake an honours year in the then-fledgling area of bioinformatics.
Kat ventured across the Nullarbor to the other side of Australia—to the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne—where she sought advice from bioinformatics guru Prof Terry Speed. As a result, she ended up as a doctoral student at the world renowned Sanger Institute at the University of Cambridge, one of the homes of the human genome project.
Continue reading Tracking the spread of deadly diseases
When killing saves lives: our immune system at work
Dr Misty Jenkins, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne
Misty’s career so far has been quite a journey for a girl from Ballarat. Along the way she been mentored by Nobel Prize-winning immunologist Prof Peter Doherty and become the first Indigenous Australian to attend either Oxford or Cambridge. Now working with Prof Joe Trapani as a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) postdoctoral fellow in the Cancer Cell Death laboratory at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, Misty has been awarded a $25,000 L’Oréal Australia and New Zealand For Women in Science Fellowship. She will use the money to further her study of what triggers T cells to detach themselves from their targets and seek additional prey.
Continue reading When killing saves lives: our immune system at work
Made to order: printing of live cells
Surgeons may soon be able to regrow patients’ nerves, such as those in damaged spinal cords, using technology adapted from the type of inkjet printer most of us have connected to our computer at home.
Researchers at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES), University of Wollongong (UOW) node in NSW, have spent the past three years developing the technology to print living human cells—nerve cells and muscle cells onto tiny biodegradable polymer scaffolds. They’ve also developed a special “ink” that carries the cells.
Giving patients more control of their lives
Dr Suetonia Palmer
University of Otago, Christchurch, New Zealand
Dr Suetonia Palmer is challenging the status quo for kidney disease treatment and helping millions of people with chronic kidney disease take back control of their lives.
Working from temporary facilities as Christchurch rebuilds, she is guiding doctors and policy makers across the world as they attempt to make the best decisions for their patients.
Continue reading Giving patients more control of their lives
New treatments for blood cancers
Dr Kylie Mason
Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research/Royal Melbourne Hospital, Melbourne, Australia
Dr Kylie Mason has set herself the goal of developing new ways of treating diseases that are considered incurable.
Micro muscles bend to the task
A breakthrough in the electroactive polymers used to make electrically controlled micro “artificial muscles” could be important for future drug delivery in the body, as well as a having a host of other applications.
The new research, conducted at the Australian National Fabrication Facility’s (ANFF) materials node at the University of Wollongong (UOW) in NSW has produced materials which, unlike earlier versions, do not need to be immersed in an electrolyte solution. They are self-sufficient and can even work in air. Continue reading Micro muscles bend to the task
Laser therapy to fight early signs of eye disease
Around fifteen per cent of people aged in their fifties who think their eyes are fine will show the early signs of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) if tested.
It is Australia’s leading cause of blindness and there is no way to stop it progressing even when detected in its earliest phase.
“There have been advances in treatment but that’s at the end stage,” says Prof Robyn Guymer, who heads the Macular Research Unit at the Centre for Eye Research Australia. Continue reading Laser therapy to fight early signs of eye disease
Clues to switching off your blood clots
Our blood has a built-in system for breaking up heart attack-inducing clots—and we’re a step closer to drugs that could switch that system on at will.
Australian researchers have won the decades-long race to define the structure of plasminogen—a protein whose active form quickly dissolves blood clots.
The current crop of clot-busting drugs have many side effects, including bleeding and thinning of the blood, so harnessing the body’s own mechanism for clearing clots could offer a better way. Continue reading Clues to switching off your blood clots
Health check for live cells
Unhealthy cells are less “squishy” than their healthy counterparts. That difference is used by a small device developed by engineers at Monash University to test living blood cells for diseases, such as malaria and diabetes. The device can then sort the cells for future culturing and experimentation without harming them.
The patented “lab-on-a-chip” and accompanying control system has attracted considerable interest from pharmaceutical companies, according to co-inventor Dr Greg Sheard of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Continue reading Health check for live cells