SPIRITUS: (01-15) A Monthly update from the Respiratory Technology team at the WIMR.

This is our January 2015 update of news from the RespiTech group at the WIMR. This marks the beginning of our 3rd year of the group and our successful monthly newsletter.

January is the holiday season in Australia and the group is just getting back into the swing of things. Of note, the group welcome new members and say goodbye to long-standing members. Firstly, Lala Sarkissian joins the group to undertake a PhD. Lala will be studying dissolution of inhaled particles and the impact on pharmacokinetics and bioequivelency. Secondly, we have seen the arrival of a team of Lego scientists. This group of extremely qualified female researchers have already got to work in our laboratories and you can follow their exploits on our Facebook page. Importantly, Eric (Bing Zhu) left us this month. Eric will take up a management position in a leading Chinese pharmaceutical company developing innovative inhalation therapies. The group had a party towards the end of the month to celebrate Eric’s farewell. 

Also this month, the group published a couple of papers and were awarded a grant. Dr Mehra Haghi (now a lecturer at UTS, Sydney) had a paper accepted in the Journal of Materials Chemistry B. entitled ‘A ‘soft spot’ for drug transport’. This paper investigates the implication of diet on the effectiveness of drugs on asthma. Dr. Judy Loo also had a paper accepted this month entitled ‘Implications and emerging control strategies for ventilator-associated infections’ in the journal ‘Expert Review of Anti-infective therapy’ Well done both!  Lastly Daniela was awarded the first grant of the year with a team from across the University of Sydney. The NHMRC Equipment Grant is worth $75,000 and supported the purchase of a specialised aerosol generation chamber for controlled drug delivery in lab studies.

2015 looks to be a fantastic year ahead and we look forward to exciting new opportunities, collaborations and programs of research within the respiratory field.