Finally New Tools Are Available To Combat Drug Resistant Tuberculosis, But How Do We Make Them Work? Models To Determine Effective Implementation Strategies In Australia And Our Region
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$1,562,250.00
Summary
The risk of drug resistance in tuberculosis (MDR TB) is thwarting control efforts and must be addressed. Potential strategies being considered are; treating MDR TB in the latent phase, using new short-course treatment for active TB and using new vaccines. My work develops simulation models to test strategies before they are implemented, to maximise impact and avoid costly or low-impact interventions. I will examine strategies in Australia and in high burden countries in Australia’s region.
Building Decision Support Systems To Combat Emerging Infectious Diseases And Neglected Tropical Diseases: A Precision Public Health Approach
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$1,562,250.00
Summary
Emerging infectious diseases and neglected tropical diseases cause significant disease burden globally, and pose major health security threats in the Asia Pacific. The frequency and severity of disease outbreaks are increasing, mostly driven by environmental and socio-demographic change. My research program will use cutting-edge technologies and analytics to develop interactive, dynamic and user-friendly decision support systems that optimise surveillance and control of infectious diseases.
Spatially Targeted Intervention For Eliminating Tuberculosis In High-burden Countries
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$645,205.00
Summary
The overall goal of my research program is to design and implement an innovative approach for eliminating TB in high-burden countries such as Ethiopia and China. My project will integrate contemporary and sophisticated analytical methods (geospatial methods, network meta-analysis and economic analysis) within a single translational research framework and provide evidence to make a substantial shift from the current paradigm of passive case detection.
Optimising Treatment And Prevention Strategies To Accelerate Malaria Elimination
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$2,163,220.00
Summary
Elimination of malaria requires the assessment of interventions that not only treat individual infections successfully but also prevent disease at a population level. My proposal brings together data science approaches and mathematical modelling to develop new methods to assess antimalarial treatments and radical population interventions, and identify markers of drug resistance, accelerating malaria elimination efforts and building capacity in this emerging cross-disciplinary field.
Mapping Neurodevelopmental Disorders In A Zebrafish Model
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$2,760,520.00
Summary
The way in which the brain develops differently in neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism is hard to reveal in humans, but can be addressed in a zebrafish model. Using cutting-edge imaging and computational techniques, this project will investigate how neural representations of the world develop differently between normal zebrafish and zebrafish mutant for a gene that causes autism. This will provide new insights into the mechanisms of altered circuit development in autism.
Computational Modelling To Understand Early-stage Neurodegeneration
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$645,205.00
Summary
Rather than attempting to reverse neurodegeneration, therapeutic strategies must target the earliest possible stages of disease, when treatments have the potential to prevent or slow down pathological progression. The proposed project will employ computational modelling using functional MRI to deliver highly efficient and sensitive markers of Familial Alzheimer’s disease and Huntington’s disease progression to inform when in the progression of disease clinical trials should take place.
Optimising Colorectal Cancer Screening In High-income Countries And Low-and-middle Income Countries Using Australia And China As An Example
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$645,205.00
Summary
This research looks for ways to improve colorectal cancer (CRC) outcomes using CRC screening. It will identity effective and affordable ‘best buy’ screening methods in Australia, a high-income country with one of the highest CRC incidence rate in the world and has an established CRC screening program, and for China, a middle-income country with the largest number new CRC cases and deaths occurred in the world and has an increased interest in cancer screening.
Elucidating Metabolic Dysregulation In Alzheimer’s Disease: Profiling The Peripheral Immune Cell Lipidome To Unravel Pathological Mechanisms.
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$645,205.00
Summary
Both the immune system and lipid metabolism have been identified to be important in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). With the failures of all clinical trials attempting to treat AD, we seek to determine a way to both better diagnose individuals with AD and to identify people at increased risk. This project uses a novel profiling technique to characterise the lipid composition of immune cells to diagnose, predict risk, monitor the disease and to identify potential disease modifying therapeutic targets.
Deciphering The Dynamic Neural Basis Of Cognition And Dementia
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$1,287,350.00
Summary
Understanding the way that the human brain works is an immense challenge, but it is one that is within our reach. My plan is to unlock the untapped potential of human brain imaging using methods from network science, physics and computational modelling. The project will create working models of the brain that we can use to test hypotheses about how the brain works at the systems level. This will allow us predict how the brain begins to deteriorate in dementia and pave the way for new treatments.
Repairing Soft Tissues With Engineered Elastic Biomaterials
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$2,914,215.00
Summary
There is an urgent medical demand for implantable soft materials that harmonise with surrounding elastic tissue and promote repair. This integrated research program leverages our leading knowledge of human elastic protein. The program’s goals are to develop powerful platform technologies that use this elastic protein, and deliver a new generation of elastic surgical products that can help treat pelvic organ prolapse and repair damaged heart tissue.