SPIRITUS: (03-15) A Monthly update from the Respiratory Technology team at the WIMR.

This is our March 2015 update of news from the RespiTech group at the WIMR. March has been busy month for the RespiTech Team. This month, we celebrated the graduation of Wing and Judy, who received their doctorate at the University of Sydney. Anphy Nguyen also graduated with his BPharm during the Pharmacy ceremony. Well done all! Also this month, YY won a prestigious 'Award for the Reduction in Use of Animals in Research' from the University of Sydney. This will be presented by the University later in the year. Daniela was reported in the National Newspaper ‘The Australian’ in an interview discussing the financial threat to the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Scheme and the need for governments to keep these National facilities open. 

Importantly this month, we announced plans for Woolcock Centre for Lung Cancer Research and Lung Cancer Research Network. This was announced in-line with the NSW State Governments commitment of $3M to the initiative. The project, of which the RespiTech team has been a key leader, will result in a state-of-the art research Centre and Hub for the wider network, which covers over 20 basic research and clinical groups from hospitals, universities and institutes across NSW. You can learn more about the Centre for Lung Cancer Research and Lung Cancer Research Network by watching the video

As always we welcome new members to our team. We welcome Beatrice Zanelli, a visiting researcher from the University of Ferrara. Beatrice will spend 4 months in our lab working on a collaborative project on inhalation drug therapy. We also welcome Anita Vandyke, a researcher with an engineering background who is looking to transition into the medical field. Anita will be working on a number of projects with our group.

Lastly, we give an update on group publications. Three publications were accepted this month; Yang Chen had a paper accepted as first author in the journal 'Pharmaceutical Research' entitled ‘Effect of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients on Aerosol Electrostatic Charges from Pressurized Metered Dose Inhalers.’; Sharon Davis was the first author on a paper entitled ‘Unique location but similar issues - working with health professionals in correctional services to improve inhaler use’ in the 'Journal of Pharmacy Practice and Research' and Eric had a paper accepted in the 'Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences' entitled ‘Tuning the Orbital® DPI device: how to control delivery parameters and aerosol performance via modification of puck orifice geometry’. You can find details of each of these articles on our publication page.