Mimetics Of Natural Triggers Of Innate Immunity As Vaccines
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$241,650.00
Summary
Knowledge of what properties of an antigen allow it to induce an immune response is central to our understanding of how we fight disease and how we can vaccinate effectively against disease. The fact that an antigen is foreign to the host is not in itself sufficient for it to initiate the series of events that must take place in order to activate B and T lymphocytes, the cells involved in immunity. For vaccine purposes, antigens must be delivered with substances called adjuvants to be effective. ....Knowledge of what properties of an antigen allow it to induce an immune response is central to our understanding of how we fight disease and how we can vaccinate effectively against disease. The fact that an antigen is foreign to the host is not in itself sufficient for it to initiate the series of events that must take place in order to activate B and T lymphocytes, the cells involved in immunity. For vaccine purposes, antigens must be delivered with substances called adjuvants to be effective. There is very little known about how adjuvants actually work but many of the highly effective experimental adjuvants contain an immunostimulant which is usually either whole dead bacteria or components of the cell walls of bacteria or other organisms. From evidence emerging in the literature and our own experimental observations, we have begun to understand the requirements for and the chain of events leading to immune response induction. The interaction of certain lipid-containing groups, present on antigens from pathogenic organisms, with a specialised type of cell, the dendritic cell, is a key event in this process. We have designed synthetic mimics of lipid-containing moieties from bacteria and coupled them to unrelated parts of viral proteins. We showed that these lipopeptides can elicit potent anti-viral immune responses and long lived memory responses. The experiments outlined in this proposal will examine the interaction of these and other second generation lipopeptides with dendritic cells. We will determine whether these can bind to particular molecules on the dendritic cell surface to initiate a specific series of signals leading to immune induction and if so we will seek to use different lipid groups to trigger the immune response in different and predictable ways. The outcomes of this work may have a major impact on the design of new vaccines as well as increase our understanding of how the immune system is triggered to respond to invading organisms.Read moreRead less
Design and Development of a Web-based Intelligent Multimedia Mining System. Increasing amounts of digital multimedia data in the form of video is being captured and stored. However, even the most advanced storage and retrieval techniques lack the features required to be used singly, or in combination, to fulfil a wide range of user needs and rapid access to multimedia resources, even in a very large video database. The core challenges are indeed to develop efficient, smart and intelligent web-ba ....Design and Development of a Web-based Intelligent Multimedia Mining System. Increasing amounts of digital multimedia data in the form of video is being captured and stored. However, even the most advanced storage and retrieval techniques lack the features required to be used singly, or in combination, to fulfil a wide range of user needs and rapid access to multimedia resources, even in a very large video database. The core challenges are indeed to develop efficient, smart and intelligent web-based multimedia mining in Australia and elsewhere. In this project, we will explore techniques and develop algorithms for content-based multimedia retrieval and mining in multimedia databases.Read moreRead less
Developing Robust Mobile Middleware for Large Scale Distributed On-line Applications. Existing electronic commerce have shown profound limitations when dealing with key issues related to electronic commerce applications, such as data interoperability, mobility and performance. The aim of this project is to understand the complexity of the underlying problems related to electronic commerce applications, and to subsequently produce a robust and efficient infrastructure to support them. It is sig ....Developing Robust Mobile Middleware for Large Scale Distributed On-line Applications. Existing electronic commerce have shown profound limitations when dealing with key issues related to electronic commerce applications, such as data interoperability, mobility and performance. The aim of this project is to understand the complexity of the underlying problems related to electronic commerce applications, and to subsequently produce a robust and efficient infrastructure to support them. It is significant because it is expected to automate most of the tedious and complex activities of on-line transactions. The main outcome will be a set of techniques and programs that will form the basis of the commercial software, with a significant export potential.Read moreRead less
Computing with nearly-consistent data. This project will help programmers correctly use data that originates at various times and places, and spreads unevenly through a system. Computation will combine data that comes from different situations, and is not exactly consistent. Capability to develop high quality software on platforms with this feature will enhance the value of the Australian IT industry. As well, the industries which use the software benefit from correctly working with their data. ....Computing with nearly-consistent data. This project will help programmers correctly use data that originates at various times and places, and spreads unevenly through a system. Computation will combine data that comes from different situations, and is not exactly consistent. Capability to develop high quality software on platforms with this feature will enhance the value of the Australian IT industry. As well, the industries which use the software benefit from correctly working with their data. Sensor networks have data like this, and they play a vital role in environmental monitoring. Cloud computing platforms also have this type of data, and these allow smaller enterprises to grow smoothly, without needing large up-front investments in computing infrastructure.Read moreRead less
Quality of Service in 3G Wireless Systems with Hybrid Networks. The increasing demand of providing Internet-based services over the mobile handsets has led to the transition from circuit-based 2G systems to packet-based network architectures in the emerging 3G systems. A major technical challenge for this paradigm shift is maintaining quality of services (QoS) for the existing data and voice and future Internet services such as streaming multimedia over such packet switching networks. This proje ....Quality of Service in 3G Wireless Systems with Hybrid Networks. The increasing demand of providing Internet-based services over the mobile handsets has led to the transition from circuit-based 2G systems to packet-based network architectures in the emerging 3G systems. A major technical challenge for this paradigm shift is maintaining quality of services (QoS) for the existing data and voice and future Internet services such as streaming multimedia over such packet switching networks. This project aims to investigate end-to-end QoS solutions in the 3G systems. Australian mobile Internet and voice carriers will significantly benefit from this technology.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE230100473
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$410,154.00
Summary
Effective integration of human and automated analyses for security testing. This DECRA project aims to significantly improve the performance of current state-of-the-art automated security testing approaches, enabling them to discover more security bugs in strict time constraints. The key innovation of the project is its novel way to embrace human element to leverage the ingenuity of the developers. This project will help companies improve the security and reliability of their products, thwarting ....Effective integration of human and automated analyses for security testing. This DECRA project aims to significantly improve the performance of current state-of-the-art automated security testing approaches, enabling them to discover more security bugs in strict time constraints. The key innovation of the project is its novel way to embrace human element to leverage the ingenuity of the developers. This project will help companies improve the security and reliability of their products, thwarting cyberattacks that cost Australian business $29 billion each year. The knowledge from this project will be transferred and integrated into higher education subjects to train the next generations of software developers, who are responsible to build security-critical systems that we all rely on now and in the future.Read moreRead less
Australian Laureate Fellowships - Grant ID: FL190100035
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$3,009,457.00
Summary
Human-centric Model-driven Software Engineering. This project aims to find fundamentally new ways to capture and use human-centric software requirements during model-driven software engineering and verifying that systems meet these requirements. There are major issues with misaligned software applications in terms of accessibility, usability, emotions, personality, age, gender, and culture. This project aims to address these through new conceptual foundations and modelling techniques for their s ....Human-centric Model-driven Software Engineering. This project aims to find fundamentally new ways to capture and use human-centric software requirements during model-driven software engineering and verifying that systems meet these requirements. There are major issues with misaligned software applications in terms of accessibility, usability, emotions, personality, age, gender, and culture. This project aims to address these through new conceptual foundations and modelling techniques for their support during software engineering. The intended outcomes are enhanced theory, models, tools and capability for next-generation software engineering with these critical elements. Significant benefits are expected to include greatly improved software quality, developer productivity and cost savings.Read moreRead less
Programming Paradigms, Tools and Algorithms for Electronic Structure Calculations on Clusters of Non-Uniform Memory Access Parallel Processors. In recent years Australian academia has invested heavily in high performance computing systems. A significant fraction of these resources are devoted to performing computational chemistry studies, such as those used in drug design. This project links Australian researchers with the company responsible for a particularly widely used computational chemistr ....Programming Paradigms, Tools and Algorithms for Electronic Structure Calculations on Clusters of Non-Uniform Memory Access Parallel Processors. In recent years Australian academia has invested heavily in high performance computing systems. A significant fraction of these resources are devoted to performing computational chemistry studies, such as those used in drug design. This project links Australian researchers with the company responsible for a particularly widely used computational chemistry application package, and also with a major international computer company. Our aim is to substantially improve the performance of this code on cluster based compute systems. This, as well as our generic performance evaluation tools, would be of substantial benefit to the Australian research community. The project will forge links with researchers in Singapore, Japan and the USA.Read moreRead less
New Developments for Bayesian statistical models and computational methods. Bayesian methods of statistical analysis provide a flexible theory for addressing inference in the presence of uncertainty. Consequently Bayesian methods have enabled scientific discovery in areas characterised as complex systems where new developments in modelling and computational methods have been crucial. Significant barriers to further success involve challenges in formulating and validating models, dealing with l ....New Developments for Bayesian statistical models and computational methods. Bayesian methods of statistical analysis provide a flexible theory for addressing inference in the presence of uncertainty. Consequently Bayesian methods have enabled scientific discovery in areas characterised as complex systems where new developments in modelling and computational methods have been crucial. Significant barriers to further success involve challenges in formulating and validating models, dealing with large data sets, and developing efficient computational methods. The principal aim of this project is to develop new Bayesian modelling and computational methodology which address these challenges with broad application.Read moreRead less
Secure and Resistant Blockchain for Financial and Business Applications. The aim of this project is to develop a practical secure blockchain technology for the booming applications in finance and business. This project expects to address the leading security threats to the current blockchain applications. The expected outcome is an executable secure and resistant blockchain prototype through the integration of the latest developed and customized techniques. The success of the project will dramat ....Secure and Resistant Blockchain for Financial and Business Applications. The aim of this project is to develop a practical secure blockchain technology for the booming applications in finance and business. This project expects to address the leading security threats to the current blockchain applications. The expected outcome is an executable secure and resistant blockchain prototype through the integration of the latest developed and customized techniques. The success of the project will dramatically benefit Australian people and government, especially for the Australian ICT industry for commercializing the research outputs. Read moreRead less