SPIRITUS: (10-14) A Monthly update from the Respiratory Technology team at the WIMR

This is our October 2014 update of news from the RespiTech group at the WIMR.October has been a productive and successful month for the RespiTech group. Firstly, members of the group were awarded a number of grants and prizes. Firstly, Paul and Dany were CI and AIs on a successful National Health and Medical Council Research Grant ($668,469) with Dr Lisa Wood ( Uni Newcastle/Woolcock) and Dr Brian Oliver (UTS/Woolcock) to study the ‘Mechanisms of impaired bronchodilator response associated with fatty acid intake in obese asthma’. This project will run over four yeas and combines basic molecular biology with clinical studies. You can learn more here. Also, this month the RespiTech group were awarded $250,000 in the Google Impact challenge to develop an App for monitoring health and the environment that can incorporate wearable health monitoring devices. The team included RespiTech, The Respiratory and Environmental Epidemiology and Allergen & upper airways groups from the Woolcock, Asthma Australia and BCG Ventures. You can learn more about the challenge here. 

We would also like to congratulate Tim Corish this month, who was awarded The Sydney Mechanical Engineering Association (USMEA) First Prize in Professional Communication in Mechanical Engineering - at the Biomedical Seminar. Well done Tim! This award is given annually by recommendation of the Head of the School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering, (University of Sydney) after consultation with the officers and members of USMEA, to the candidate for the degree of Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering. Congratulations also go out to Matteo Padroni who graduated with his Pharmacy Degree at the University of Ferrara, Italy. Matteo spent the past six months working with the group studying inhaled antibiotic therapies.

Members of the group have also been travelling. Paul and Daniela visited three countries in Europe over 96 hours to establish a number of new projects and networks, while Eric travelled to China to attend IDDA China to establish a number of new collaborations. Towards the end of the month, Larissa, Emelie, Giulia, Yang, Michele, Valentina, Dany and Paul travelled to Adelaide to attend the CRS PostgGrad work shop on drug delivery. The workshop was both productive and social. The outcome of the Karaoke challenge can be found on the groups social Facebook page.

Lastly, the group published one paper this month entitled 'Solid Lipid microparticles as an approach to drug delivery' in Expert Opinion on Drug Delivery. This work is part of ongoing collaborations between the University of Ferrara , A/Prof Scalia, and the Woolcock.