This is the July 2018 newsletter from the RespiTech Group at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research

This month we congratulate PhD student Jesse Xu for being a finalist and winner in the School of Medicine 3-minute Thesis completion. Jesse competed against pHD students from across the School and was award the prize for his presentation on 3D printed airway stents.

We also congratulate Jesse this month for being awarded a PhD Internship. This highly competitive Internship will see Jesse placed in a biotech start-up company for the next 6 months to experience industry R&D. Well done Jesse!

This month Paul and Daniela travel to Europe to meet with collaborators. Lastly, we give an update of RespiTech publications. This month the group had two Journal articles accepted. An article with Stewart Yeung as first author was accepted in the International Journal of Pharmaceutics and is titled "Dosing challenges in respiratory therapies." Int J Pharm 548(1): 659-671. The second by Arianna Fallacara and Laura Busato, visiting students from the University of Ferrara was accepted in the European Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences. The paper was titled "Combination of urea-crosslinked hyaluronic acid and sodium ascorbyl phosphate for the treatment of inflammatory lung diseases: An in vitro study." You can learn more about RespiTech publications here.

Jesse Xu wins SoS 3MT

This is the June 2018 newsletter from the RespiTech Group at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research.

This month we congratulate YY (Hui-Xin Ong) on the birth of her baby girl. YY gave birth to Zoey Chan on Sunday 10th June at 11.45. Both baby and mother are well and the RespiTech team wish YY and family all the best.

More good news for YY this month, in addition to a new family member, YY was awarded a grant as primary investigator. YY and Dr Steven Kao (Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and Asbestos Disease Research Institute) were successfully awarded a Perpetual IMPACT award of $126,545 to research and develop non-invasive diagnostic tools for identifying lung cancer early. The grant is a key project of the Lung Cancer Research Network and will be supported by the Centre for Lung Cancer Research at the Woolcock.

Lastly, this month we welcomed Dr Stefano Giovagnoli from the University of Perugia who visited us to discuss ongoing collaborations and visiting students for 2018

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YY, Marcus and Baby Zoey

From left, Paul Young, Daniela Traini, Stefano Giovagnoli and Prof Sandra Anderseron 

This is the May 2018 newsletter from the RespiTech Group at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research.

This month Dr Maliheh Ghadiri was awarded the Woolcock Postdoctoral Fellowship. The Woolcock Postdoctoral Fellowship is highly competitive externally advertised Postdoctoral Fellowship that provides two years salary support for an early career researcher to undertake cutting edge medical research at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research. Congratulations Mali!

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Dr Maliheh Ghadiri awarded Woolcock Postdoctorate Fellowship

Also this month, Daniela Traini was invited to talk about her life as a Italian Scientist immigrating to Australia. Daniela spoke at the Italian Forum in Sydney about her Research in Medicine and at the Woolcock on treating lung diseases.

Daniela talks about her life as a Italian and Australian Scientist at the Forum, Leichhardt, Sydney.

Members of the Respitech team, awarded a grant for building a pharmaceutical manufacturing company have finally located a site for the new company, Ab-Initio. Hui Xin Ong (YY) Daniela Traini and Paul Young, CIs on the grant have located a premises near the University and Sydney Local Health District RPA campus. The next step is the design phase. Dr Michele Pozzoli is helping develop the requirements for the site in partnership with the University and SLHD.

As always, we give an update on Respitech Journal publications. This month Paul was a co-author on an article in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (JACI). The lead author was Professor Lisa Wood (School of Biomedical Sciences and Pharmacy at the University of Newcastle, Australia) and the article was titled "Saturated fatty acids, obesity, and the nucleotide oligomerization domain-like receptor protein 3 (NLRP3) inflammasome in asthmatic patients."

Lastly with the increasing workload as the new Chair of Commercialisation in the new Faculty of Medicine and Health, Paul Young stepped down in his role as Deputy Executive Director of the Woolcock. 

This is the April 2018 newsletter from the RespiTech Group at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research

April has been a busy month for members of the Respiratory Technology team. Firstly, the Woolcock opened it's new Centre for Lung Cancer Research. The Centre was officially opened on Wednesday, 18 April by the Hon. Brad Hazzard MP, New South Wales Minister for Health and Minister for Medical Research. The Centre will support large-scale research projects run from its high- tech purpose-built Glebe facilities, and act as a hub for the Lung Cancer Research Network, a consortia of researchers, clinicians, respiratory physicians, oncologists, radiologists, thoracic surgeons and advocates for lung cancer. Paul Young was MC for the event and invited speakers Prof Carol Armour (Exec Director of the Woolcock), Lillian Leigh (Patient Advocate) and the Vice Chancellor and Principle Michael Spence (The University of Sydney) spoke prior to the minister officially opening the Centre. You can learn more about the Centre and its affiliated network here.

Also this month, the RespiTech team travelled to Arizona to attend Respiratory Drug Delivery 2018. Sandra Grau Bartual gave a "poster on the podium talk" on how airway pressure influences cell structure and permeability. Sandra spent time in the RespiTech labs and is a PhD student and collaborator from Auckland University of Technology. Sandra is supervised by Professor Ahmed Al-Jumaily, Director of Institute of Biomedical Technologies at AUT. The program of work was supervised locally by Maliheh Ghadiri. Paul Young also gave a keynote at the conference on "the challenges of inhaling bricks" and Jesse Xu helped out as AV extraordinaire. As always, the event also involved catching up with old colleagues and a number of social events. The RespiTech lego Scientist even made an appearance.

This month we also see Dr Rania Salama join the RespiTech team. Rania has been appointed as a Lecturer in Pharmacology and will work on Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Masters Degree. Within the RespiTech group Rania will lead the Orbital Cystic Fibrosis program. Welcome Rania!

Lastly, we give an update on Respitech publications, This month the team published a review in Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews. The article was titled "Repurposing of statins via inhalation to treat lung inflammatory conditions." and had lead authors YY (Hui Xin Ong - RespiTech) and Peta Bradbury (Cell Biology) and was a publication in the Woolcock Emphysema Centre.

This is the March 2018 newsletter from the RespiTech Group at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research

This month Paul Young was appointed as the Inaugural Chair of Commercialisation within the Faculty of Medicine and Health. The new "Super Faculty" encompasses all the medical related disciplines and Facilities across the University including the Faculties of Pharmacy, Dentistry, Nursing, Medicine, Health Sciences. This new role was established to facilitate commercialisation development across the faculty and is responsible for identifying and fostering medical and health research, technology and expertise suitable for commercial development. The Chair is also responsible for promoting and facilitating linkages between researchers and industry. This new role will see Paul role back his administrative duties as Deputy Director of the Woolcock to allow him to better support the Universities and all Medical research Institutes associated with the University. Side note: As part of this new role, Paul was invited to be the debate spokesperson at the Annual Faculty Dinner, arguing the case that "Medical Professionals will be replaced by Robots soon and the next generation of MD graduates will be programers. Tough call for a room full of clinicians;)

As always we give an update on publications by the group. This month, Stewart Yeung was first author on a article titled "Limitations of high dose carrier based formulations." The article was accepted in the International Journal of Pharmaceutics and is part of Stewarts PhD sponsored by Chiesi Innovation Centre based in Chippenham, UK

This is the February 2018 newsletter from the RespiTech Group at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research.

This month, Daniela Traini was awarded a Australian Research Council linkage grant. The Linkage program parters industry and academic institutes to conduct translation research. The grant funding from the ARC was $555,000 and the grant is titled "Smart hybrid system for the formulation and design of dry powder inhalers.Collaborators include David Fletcher (Engineering at Sydney), Julio Soria (Monash University) and David Lewis (Chiesi Innovation Centre, UK). The project aims to develop a greater understanding of the link between inhaler device components and the dry powder formulation within. From this understanding, the project will develop a hybrid model for the design and manufacture of dry powder inhalers with improved aerosol deposition performances as well as an enhanced capacity to predict formulation performance. The long term benefits will be improved delivery efficiency and shorter development times, leading to reduced manufacturing costs. You can learn more about Respitech competitive grants here.

This month the group published two Journal articles. The first accepted in International Journal of Pharmaceutics had first-author Maliheh Ghadiri The article was titled "The use of fatty acids as absorption enhancer for pulmonary drug delivery." The second article was accepted in Pharmaceutical Research and was titled "Sweetening Inhaled Antibiotic Treatment for Eradication of Chronic Respiratory Biofilm Infection."  Authors included J Loo & W Lee (Malaysia) S Scalia & G. Lauretani (Ferrara) D. Cipolla (Aradigm) and  D. Traini, P. Young and H. X. Ong (YY) (Sydney) The paper was related to the ongoing Linkage program with Aradigm in San Francisco. You can learn more about RespiTech publications here.

This is the January 2018 newsletter from the RespiTech Group at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research

Happy new year! January is always a slow month in Oz as it is officially holiday season. This month we celebrate the submission of Giula Ballerin's PhD thesis. Giula has been undertaking a PhD with the group and collaborators at UTS (led by A/Prof Cinthia Whitchurch) looking at modifying bacterial response to improve antibiotic effectiveness in lung infections. Congratulations Giula! 

Jesse Xu received a PhD Scholarship from the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research this month, funded through a kind donation in memory of Sheila Jacobson. Jesse’s PhD focusses on developing personalised airway stents using 3D printing technology and this scholarship will enable hime to work on his project full time via the soon to be opened Centre for Lung Cancer Research.

As always we give an update of publications by the group. The first paper for 2018 is a publication accepted with collaborated Patrick Spicer from UNSW, Sydney. The paper titled "microfluidic production of endoskeleton droplets with controlled size and shape" was accepted in Powder Technology. You can find all Respitech Journal publications .

Lastly, this month we say farewell to  Roberto Paleco. Roberto was a lab-technician extraordinaire and the group will miss him. Farewell Roberto and all the best.

This is the December 2017 newsletter from the RespiTech Group at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research.

This month has seen members of the team travel to the UK to attend Drug Delivery to the Lung Conference. Jesse Xu presented a poster on TRPV channels and the group caught up with a number of long-term collaborators. Post conference the Dany and Paul travelled to Bath to attend a CDFS/Bath University Reunion and also caught up with long term linkage parters in Chippenham and Bath. 

Meanwhile back in Sydney, Prof Santo Scallia, from the University of Ferrara visited the team and was hosted by YY and Mali. Santo is a long term collaborator of the group and has co-supervised a number of PhD students and projects in the area of DPI therapy. Continuing the celebrations, the team celebrated the submission of Larissa Gomes Dos Reis PhD thesis this month. The team went out to celebrate Yasmin Shirmanesh and Sandra Grau Bartual who are leaving us after spending time undertaking research projects with us from the UK and New Zealand respectively.

Lastly, Merry Christmas to all the followers of the RespiTech team!

This is the November 2017 newsletter from the RespiTech Group at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research. 

In November the group attended the Woolcock Student Symposia day. This is an annual event at the Woolcock that promotes research of the Postgraduate students and encourages collaboration between researchers and disciplines. Also this month, members of the team attended the annual Asian Pacific Society of Respirology Conference. Mariam Mamlouk was invited to present her clinical work on CF, patient mucus viscosity and the effectiveness of DNASE. Mariam was awarded best abstract. Well done Mariam! Also this month the group published two articles. The first was a commentary by Giula Ballerin in the Australian Society for Microbioolgy NSW monthly journal. In the article, Giula discuses how we can exploit bacterial lifestyles to treat infectious disease. The second article was by Zara Sheikh in the Journal Expert Opinion on Orphan Drugs. The article was entitle "Is there a role for inhaled anti-inflammatory drugs in cystic fibrosis treatment?" Well done Giula and Zara! You can learn more about RespiTech Journal publications here

Lastly and most importantly, the RespiTech group held their annual Christmas party this month. As usual the team hosted the party on level 5 of the Woolcock Institute and invited friends and collaborators to enjoy dinner, drinks and Secret Santa (this year in high heels!). You can find more about the party and our social events on the RespiTech Facebook and Twitter social media platforms. Please visit, like and follow!

This is the October 2017 newsletter from the RespiTech Group at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research. This month the group attended Drug Delivery Australia 2018 in Wollongong, along the South coast of NSW to present a number of posters about their Respitech research. Additionally, Larissa Gomes Dos Reis gave an invited talk on her work on respiratory gene therapy while Michele Pozzoli gave an invited presentation about a novel strategy for wound healing in the lung. It was an enjoyable and productive conference, and as always there was plenty of social time at the conference dinner.

RespiTech at DDA2017 | Wollongong | NSW | Australia.

This month, members of the RespiTech team, Daniela Traini, Hui Xin Ong (YY) and Paul Young were awarded an MTPConnect grant to establish a GMP manufacturing site for the production of pharmaceuticals in NSW. This new initiative will provide researchers with a facility to formulate and manufacture new pharmaceutical products to regulatory standards so that they can be tested in the clinic. You can learn more about this exciting initiative here