Development Of Endogenous Granulocyte Colony Stimulating Factor (G-CSF) Antagonism As A New Therapeutic Approach To Inflammatory Disease
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$401,561.00
Summary
Neutrophils play a pivotal role in inflammatory diseases including rheumatoid arthritis (RA). G-CSF is a growth factor that is important to neutrophil survival and function. We have shown that in the absence of G-CSF the incidence and severity of experimental autoimmune arthritis are reduced. We will investigate the mechanisms by which this occurs as well as studying the effects of G-CSF blockade on function and survival of human neutrophils from healthy donors and RA patients.
Fighting Mental Disorders: Using Mental Imagery To Disarm Symptoms And Enhance Treatment.
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$415,218.00
Summary
This proposal will conduct the first pre-clinical and clinical research utilising mental imagery to disarm symptoms and enhance treatment of multiple mental disorders by controlling the strength of mental imagery. This fellowship represents the first attempt to alleviate symptoms by developing a cognitive-neuroscience method to control the strength of traumatic imagery and to show a causative means of enhancing imagery strength to boost the success rate of cognitive therapy involving imagery.
Refining Treatment Strategies For Youth Depression: Clinical Trials And Biomarker Development
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$339,221.00
Summary
Depression is the biggest contributor to disease burden of all illnesses suffered by young people. Despite this existing treatments are often not effective. The Career Development Fellowship will aid efforts to improve treatments for youth depression, by enabling the implementation of important clinical trials, and the identification and development of imaging biomarkers that can help to target treatments at patients most likely to benefit from them.
Multiple sclerosis is the most common cause of neurological disability among young adults. The patients’ individual response to therapy is highly variable. The research vision completed during this Fellowship will generate novel evidence enabling individually-tailored therapy of multiple sclerosis. Through the newly established Clinical Outomes Research Unit at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, the expertise from observational data in multiple sclerosis will be applied in other areas of neurology.
Tumour-on-a-chip Models For Ex-vivo Profiling Of Immune Checkpoint Blockades
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$431,000.00
Summary
The overall goal of this project is to build novel 3D biochips to culture primary human tumors with their immune cells, and to investigate patient specific responses to immune checkpoint blockade ex-vivo. Since there are currently no validated methodologies to study immunotherapy response in patient-derived cancer specimens, this proposal has the potential to provide a state-of-the art technology for the ‘personalization’ of immunotherapy.