Respiratory and Infectious Diseases Research

The Respiratory and Infectious Disease Research Group is a multidisciplinary research team comprising doctors, nurses, allied health professionals and basic scientists, that is engaged in cross disciplinary and translational research with a particular focus on respiratory and infectious diseases.

Aim

To provide every Mater lung patient with the opportunity to join a clinical trial.

Purpose

To improve access to frontline treatments through collaborative research.

The Research Group is very strong in clinical trials and supports a world-class clinical trials unit. The Respiratory, Infectious Disease and Other (RIO) clinical trials unit is capable of running a range of clinical trials from Phase 1 through to Phase 4. It commonly achieves the highest site recruitment for global clinical trials and has the versatility to support clinical trials involving genetically modified organisms (GMO’s), vaccines, infusions, nebulised therapies as well as inhaled and oral treatments.

The Respiratory and Infectious Diseases Group also manages the David Serisier Research Biobank, a broad clinical repository of human samples. The Biobank holds blood, peripheral blood mononuclear cells, serum, sputum, tissue, stool, urine and human bronchial epithelial cells from a wide range of healthy and respiratory patient cohorts including cystic fibrosis, bronchiectasis, asthma, lung cancer and COVID-19.

The Research Group contributes data to several national clinical registries including:

Respiratory and Infectious Diseases Group Researchers have attracted external funding as both chief investigators and associate investigators from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and the Medical Research Futures Fund (MRFF) to enable clinical and translational research in a broad spectrum of respiratory illnesses including COVID-19, lung cancer, bronchiectasis, non-tuberculous mycobacterium and cystic fibrosis.