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Lisa is a current PhD student with a keen interest in immunology. She graduated from University of Wollongong in 2015 with a Bachelor of Science degree majoring in Biological sciences. Her honours project focused on P2 receptors and inflammatory pathways, where she received a first class honours degree and merit from the Dean for her thesis. She moved to Brisbane in 2016 where she worked as a research assistant in the Lung and allergy research centre located at Diamantina institute. Lisa is an author on 2 research articles in the field of asthma and an additional 2 in the field of inflammation and cell signalling. Lisa commenced her PhD in July 2019. Her project is entitled “Using proteomics to understand and prevent asthma exacerbations with macrolide antibiotics”. Her project focuses on investigating the sputum proteome to better understand how azithromycin can reduce exacerbations in those with severe persistent asthma.
Peter Van Asperen Career Development Scholarship
New interventions are needed for non-eosinophilic or non-T2 asthma phenotypes. Although the AMAZES study (Lancet 2017) showed that azithromycin (AZM) reduces asthma exacerbations, there is limited understanding of involved mechanisms. Lisa’s work will provide an important foundation for defining new biomarkers and protein signatures that predict asthma exacerbations, and the AZM response. This will allow better identification of asthma patients who are likely to benefit from AZM. In the future, it is important that AZM add-on therapy is targeted to those most likely to improve, rather than using AZM in an indiscriminate fashion.
Lisa will use the Peter Van Asperen Career Development Grant for;
- A methods paper to be submitted to Journal of Proteomics,
- Attendance at TSANZ for oral presentation, and
- Targeted proteomic experiments.
Dimpalben Patel is a PhD student enrolled at Curtin University and collaborated with Telethon Kids Institute. She completed a Master of Pharmacy from India, in 2012 and a Master of Public Health from Curtin University, Perth, in 2016. Her PhD research work focuses on using machine learning methods to create a prediction score for childhood asthma. The project outcomes will lead to opportunities to improve asthma diagnosis in young children, prevent misdiagnosis, and potentially prevent asthma development. She has been awarded a Research Stipend and Top-Up Scholarship from Curtin University. Her master’s project explored the joint effects of heatwaves and air quality on emergency services and led to two paper publications in peer-reviewed journals. The outcome was used as baseline data to obtain a research grant funding from Telethon–Perth Children’s Hospital Research Fund (Round 5). Before PhD, she was a Research Associate at the Western Australia Department of Health. She worked on investigating the spatial relationship between heatwaves and air quality on children’s emergency services.
Peter Van Asperen Career Development Scholarship
Dimpal’s work aims to use machine learning to predict asthma development in children. Asthma diagnosis, particularly in very young children, is complicated and challenging, leading to both under/over-diagnosis of asthma. Hence, there has been a significant worldwide effort to develop tools/methods to identify asthma risk as early as possible to create windows of opportunity to prevent disease development. Unfortunately, most childhood asthma prediction tools using traditional statistical models have low accuracy, sensitivity, and positive predictive value. Machine learning is a novel approach that may increase the accuracy of predicting future disease development by finding patterns and trends from different complex and large datasets in powerful ways. The ability to undertake an individualised risk assessment may offer targeted approaches for early intervention and prevention and minimise the overall cost/burden of the disease.
Dimpal will use the Peter Van Asperen Career Development Grant for;
- Journal article submission titled “Development of personalised predicting score for childhood asthma using a machine learning algorithm,” and
- Four online machine learning courses/conferences.
Dr Sj Sijie Shen is a postdoctoral researcher in Professor Phil Hansbro’s UTS/Centenary Centre for Inflammation, based at the Centenary Institute, Sydney (since 2019). His research investigates the importance of the gut microbiome in modulating inflammation and inflammatory diseases in the lungs, especially in relation to severe asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The ultimate goal of his studies is to find an effect method of therapeutically modulating the gut microbiome to prevent and treat chronic inflammatory lung diseases. Dr Shen is a researcher in respiratory and gastrointestinal tract diseases, with a major focus on the interaction between host immunity and microbiomes. He has a special interest in the role that diet plays in immune responses and disease progression and modification. Dr Shen completed his PhD at Monash Medical Centre/Monash University VIC (2019) examining the interplay between the gut microbiome and neutrophils in a mouse model of colitis. His research topic during his 3rd year research project and Honours (Monash University) was examining the role of dietary fibre and short-chain fatty acids in a mouse models of lung inflammation (allergic airways disease and aspergillosis).
Peter Van Asperen Career Development Scholarship
Although only a small percentage (~5-15%) of asthmatics have severe asthma, they represent a disproportionally large burden both clinically and economically (50-80% of asthma healthcare costs). The gut microbiome describes the collection of microorganisms that inhabit the gastrointestinal tract, and its composition is altered in various inflammatory diseases including in allergic asthma. Modulation of the gut microbiome has been shown to be beneficial in mouse models of allergic airways disease. Indeed, prebiotics such as dietary fibre, probiotic bacteria, and microbial metabolites have all shown efficacy in protecting against the development of allergic airway disease. However, these all prevent the development rather than treating established disease. Thus, researchers are beginning to investigate a method of ‘resetting’ the microbiome with faecal microbiota transplantation (FMT). Although FMT has been shown effective in gut inflammation, knowledge is lacking in asthma and in particular severe asthma. Our clinically relevant mouse model of severe, steroid resistant asthma is a unique tool for investigating FMT and its potential as a therapeutic in severe asthma.
Sj will use the Peter Van Asperen Career Development Grant to contribute to consumables needed for the processing of faecal samples as part of an FMT research project.
