Protecting Against Malaria Through Liver-resident Memory T Cells
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$1,196,853.00
Summary
We have shown that formation of liver-resident memory T cells (Trm), a newly discovered type of immune cells, can be induced by an innovative vaccination strategy called prime and trap for highly efficient protection against malaria in mice. Here, we will enhance prime and trap vaccination efficacy by defining the conditions that maximize liver Trm-mediated protection and will characterize simian and human liver Trm cells, paving the way to create the most efficient human malaria vaccine to date
Development And Validation Of A Latent Tuberculosis Diagnostic
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$534,865.00
Summary
Globally, tuberculosis is a leading cause of death with 9.6 million new diagnoses in 2014. The diagnosis of latent TB infection is important, but is difficult to make because current assays are suboptimal. We have developed a very simple assay which detects responses to TB antigens by co-expression of two surface markers expressed by CD4+ T cells. We propose to develop this into a highly standardised kit for the diagnosis of TB with our commercial partner Cytognos.
Initial Interactions Of Herpes Simplex Virus With Innate Immune Cells In Human Skin
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$522,589.00
Summary
Herpes simplex viruses 1 and 2 cause widespread and occasionally serious diseases including genital herpes, neonatal death and encephalitis. Current vaccine candidates are at best partially effective. This grant will examine the way that the virus enters, initially spreads within the skin and interacts with immune cells to help determine which cells should be stimulated by vaccines.
Automatic detection and modelling of acoustic markers of speech timing. This project aims to create new automatic sensing, analysis and assessment of cognitive, affective, mental and physical state from voice for mobile and computing devices. This project expects to generate new understanding of the effects of these states on detailed timing indicators of speech motor control, and new signal processing and machine learning methods that best exploit it. Expected outcomes from this project include ....Automatic detection and modelling of acoustic markers of speech timing. This project aims to create new automatic sensing, analysis and assessment of cognitive, affective, mental and physical state from voice for mobile and computing devices. This project expects to generate new understanding of the effects of these states on detailed timing indicators of speech motor control, and new signal processing and machine learning methods that best exploit it. Expected outcomes from this project include a new and accurate deep neural network framework for learning, analysing and detecting human states from speech automatically using articulatory timing markers. This should provide significant benefits, such as individually-tailored, frequent and low-cost automatic detection, monitoring and analytics for adverse states.Read moreRead less
Innovative hands-free technology to give the severely disabled greater mobility control. Half of the serious neurological injuries in Australia result in tetraplegia. Combined with other disabilities that involve severe mobility impairments the cost to the community economically, psychologically and socially is huge. This new Australian technology will facilitate effective sharing of control between a disabled person and a computer control system, taking advantage of their unique strengths and e ....Innovative hands-free technology to give the severely disabled greater mobility control. Half of the serious neurological injuries in Australia result in tetraplegia. Combined with other disabilities that involve severe mobility impairments the cost to the community economically, psychologically and socially is huge. This new Australian technology will facilitate effective sharing of control between a disabled person and a computer control system, taking advantage of their unique strengths and enabling each to aid the other in areas of weakness. The social and personal benefits are potentially very large. Scope also exists to significantly reduce healthcare costs and to develop a new industry in hands-free technology.Read moreRead less
Deciphering How TCR Affinity Regulates CD4 T Cell Help In Immunity And Autoimmunity
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$850,885.00
Summary
Immune responses require the coordinated interaction and cross-talk between two types of white blood cells known as CD4 and CD8 T cells. A dysregulated interaction between these cells could be the cause of autoimmune and persistent infections by pathogens leading to chronic diseases. The aim of this proposal is to provide a deeper understanding of CD4/CD8 T cell interactions to improve immune outcomes in many chronic diseases in which interaction between these two immune cells is critical.
Cohort discovery and activity mining for policy impact prediction. Cohort discovery and activity mining for policy impact prediction. This project aims to develop an intelligent systematic framework to predict policy impacts on Australian patients, by discovering inherent patient cohorts and assessing the impact of the policies on these cohorts. The proposed methods lay the theoretical foundations for building intelligent automated tools for policy assessment. Expected outcomes are data-driven p ....Cohort discovery and activity mining for policy impact prediction. Cohort discovery and activity mining for policy impact prediction. This project aims to develop an intelligent systematic framework to predict policy impacts on Australian patients, by discovering inherent patient cohorts and assessing the impact of the policies on these cohorts. The proposed methods lay the theoretical foundations for building intelligent automated tools for policy assessment. Expected outcomes are data-driven patient group discovery, which could more precisely identify the patient cohorts most likely to benefit from a specific policy; and a model to predict the efficacy of policy options, which could increase the sustainability of the national health system by enabling smarter, more efficient policy decision-making.Read moreRead less
Automatic speech-based assessment of mental state via mobile device. This project aims to create the first mobile, device-based automatic assessment of mental state from acoustic speech. Focusing on novel approaches for eliciting speech, for regression-based scoring of mental state and for longitudinal modelling of speech, the project takes speech processing out of the laboratory and into realistic environments. The project is significant because elicitation approach and longitudinal modelling h ....Automatic speech-based assessment of mental state via mobile device. This project aims to create the first mobile, device-based automatic assessment of mental state from acoustic speech. Focusing on novel approaches for eliciting speech, for regression-based scoring of mental state and for longitudinal modelling of speech, the project takes speech processing out of the laboratory and into realistic environments. The project is significant because elicitation approach and longitudinal modelling have been acknowledged by the research community as challenges that are valuable to investigate, and because conventional regression methods are sub-optimal on ordinal mental state scales. This is significant commercially because mobile devices allow individually tailored, frequent and low-cost mental state assessment. Expected outcomes will include commercial-ready technology, trialled on Australians, accessible to everyone with a mobile device and concentration of Australian research and development capability in a rapidly growing application area.Read moreRead less
Learning to Pinpoint Emerging Software Vulnerabilities. This project aims to develop learning-based software vulnerability detection techniques to improve the reliability and security of modern software systems. The existing techniques relying on conventional yet rigid software analysis and testing techniques are ineffective and/or inefficient when detecting a wide variety of emerging software vulnerabilities. The outcomes of this project will be a deep-learning-based detection approach and an ....Learning to Pinpoint Emerging Software Vulnerabilities. This project aims to develop learning-based software vulnerability detection techniques to improve the reliability and security of modern software systems. The existing techniques relying on conventional yet rigid software analysis and testing techniques are ineffective and/or inefficient when detecting a wide variety of emerging software vulnerabilities. The outcomes of this project will be a deep-learning-based detection approach and an open-source tool that can capture precision correlations between deep code features and diverse vulnerabilities to pinpoint emerging vulnerabilities without the need for bug specifications. Significant benefits include greatly improved quality, reliability and security for modern software systems.Read moreRead less
Privacy-preserving cloud data mining-as-a-service. This project aims to explore practical privacy-preserving solutions for cloud data mining-as-a-service based on the Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX) technology. The research addresses privacy concerns of users when outsourcing data mining needs to the cloud. These concerns have increased as more businesses evaluate data mining-as-an outsourced service due to lack of expertise or computation resources. The expected outcomes from the research ....Privacy-preserving cloud data mining-as-a-service. This project aims to explore practical privacy-preserving solutions for cloud data mining-as-a-service based on the Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX) technology. The research addresses privacy concerns of users when outsourcing data mining needs to the cloud. These concerns have increased as more businesses evaluate data mining-as-an outsourced service due to lack of expertise or computation resources. The expected outcomes from the research will include new data privacy models, new privacy-preserving data mining algorithms, and a prototype of cloud data mining software. These will help businesses cut costs for data mining and privacy protection, and provide significant benefits toward helping Australia achieve its national cyber security strategy and potentially provide economic impact from commercialisation of new software technology for the industry partner.Read moreRead less