Macrophages are specialised phagocytic cells that are present in all mammalian tissues, where they play critical roles in homeostasis and host defence. A PhD opportunity is available on an Australian Research Council-funded Discovery Project for a student with an honours/master’s degree in immunology, physiology, molecular biology or a related field to join the Macrophage Biology research group at Mater Research.

Mucosal epithelial cells in the lung, are uniquely positioned at the interface between the host immune system and an environment teeming with antigens. We are interested in looking at the pathways that regulate epithelial cell antigen presentation, their role and whether this is disrupted with age, making the elderly more susceptible to infection.

Males of reproductive age are unlikely to visit health practitioners for regular care until later in life. The QLD family cohort study and the Indigenous QLD Family cohort study have both collect broad health data and measures from mothers and their partners during pregnancy. Research data includes but is not limited to, chronic disease, nutritional intake, alcohol and other drugs, mental health, physical activity, sleep, asthma and allergies.

• Opportunities exist for a PhD student to work alongside this research team to understand the health of men during this time frame.
• Supervisors will work with candidates to develop a PhD project that is both in line with the candidate’s research interests and fits within scope of other activities.

This study will investigate whether sulfate therapy reduces the risk of developing adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes after preterm birth. The study, led by Associate Professor Paul Dawson, has been awarded a grant by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). The study is being undertaken following evidence that sulfate is important for brain development and that preterm infants rapidly become sulfate deficient unless their mother receives magnesium sulfate during preterm labour. Magnesium sulfate is currently administered to mothers in preterm labour at less than 30 weeks gestation and reduces the risk of cerebral palsy in the infant. However, almost half of women miss out on this neuroprotective therapy due to insufficient time to give the treatment.

To address these challenges, this NHMRC-funded project will investigate both safety and neuroprotective benefit aspects of neonatal sulphate supplementation using an established and clinically relevant preterm animal model. The study is designed specifically to support direct translation to a clinical trial of sulfate supplementation in very preterm infants.

It is well recognized that gut microbiota shapes human immunity and plays important roles in regulating nearly all aspects of human disease development. The literature also suggests that antibiotic administration may lead to worse side-effects in patients treated with cancer therapy.
In this project, we aim to understand how the disruption of gut microbiota can lead to local tissue damage and contribute to increased side-effects of cancer therapy in pre-clinical mouse models.

Normal stem cells reside in specific microenvironments (niches) in the body which provide support and cell survival signaling. Malignant stem cells also manipulate their local environments in order to take advantage of these survival (therapy-resistance) and growth signals.
The goal of this project is to identify pro-tumor survival factors in the malignant cell niche that are involved in promoting cancer cell survival and therapy resistance.
In part 2, the importance of these factors in determining outcome of cancer progression and therapy response will be investigated in preclinical cancer models.
Anticipated outcomes of this research project may include new strategies to improve anti-cancer therapy outcomes.

About 80% of all Australian cancer patients experience adverse outcomes following their cancer therapy. Adverse cancer therapy side-effects can greatly impact quality of life, can directly lead to patient death and/or require treatment pause, thus compromising a patients’ chance of cure.
This project seeks to identify the underlying pathways that cause adverse cancer therapy outcomes, then use this knowledge for new therapeutic strategies to prevent them.
Anticipated Impact of this research may include improved quality of life for cancer therapy patients and their family through a new treatment strategy to alleviate long and short term cancer therapy side-effects.

Diabetic kidney disease (DKD) is the leading cause of end stage renal disease globally, affecting between 30-40% of patients with diabetes, drastically increasing patients’ risk for cardiovascular mortality and death. Current treatment regimens slow but don’t prevent disease, as such, there is a clinical need for therapies that prevent or ameliorate DKD. Mitochondrial dysfunction has been identified as one of the main pathways contributing to the pathogenesis of DKD but different components of the kidney have very different metabolic preferences, different mitochondrial densities and respond differently to the change in metabolic fuels available in diabetes. We have been trialling a novel redox modulating agent that shows efficacy at improving diabetic kidney disease in animal models, but the mechanism of action is not yet understood. In this project we wish to examine the effects of diabetes and glucose modulation (mimicking the increased glucose variability experienced by patients with diabetes) on different renal cell populations in the context of other important factors present in the diabetic milieu (inflammatory cytokines, growth factors). Here, we wish to both further our understanding of the effects of diabetes on mitochondrial function in the different cell types that populate the kidney and to discover the mechanism of action of our redox therapy in diabetic kidney cells.

EXPLOITING THE HOST RESPONSE TO RESPIRATORY INFECTIONS FOR NOVEL THERAPIES

Our laboratory studies the host response to viral and bacterial respiratory infections with particular focus on innate immunity in the lung. We discovered that lung infections lead to the production of oxidised cholesterols, which facilitate the migration of macrophages into the lung which drives inflammation.

We further found an oxysterol receptor antagonist significantly reduced viral loads and inflammation in animals infected with SARS-CoV-2 and resulted in less severe disease.

This project will now investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying these observations.

Note: The honours student will NOT work with live SARS-CoV-2 during this project and the project will be entirely PC2 laboratory based.

People with intellectual disability experience significant health disparity and engage in less preventive health actions than the general population. Practice nurses are now common in general practice and are an untapped resource for building capacity in intellectual disability health in primary care. We will deliver an intervention which includes (i) specialised intellectual disability nurse support, (ii) training for practice nurses to deliver the CHAP annual health assessment tool, (iii) an online primary care education package; and (iv) online resources.

A cluster-randomised trial design will be used to evaluate the evidence for improved preventive health outcomes including vaccinations, metabolic syndrome screening and cancer screening in people with intellectual disability aged 15 years and over.