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News & Events

Wal-yan Centre scholarship awardees to research interventions for improving lung health

As part of the Wal-yan Respiratory Research Centre’s aim to support the next generation of scientists in children’s respiratory research, a competitive scholarship program was introduced this year.

News & Events

Lung health of Aboriginal children hospitalised with chest infections improved following co-designed intervention

A co-designed and culturally secure intervention to improve medical follow-up for Aboriginal children hospitalised with acute chest infections resulted in higher follow-up rates and improved longer-term lung health outcomes for children.

News & Events

Study unlocks new knowledge about the role of immune cells in asthma flare-ups

Flare-ups of asthma are usually brought on by respiratory infections, such as the common cold, and are one of the most common reasons for a child to miss school or require emergency care.

News & Events

Wal-yan respiratory researchers head to Milan to participate in international congress

The Wal-yan Respiratory Research Centre is proud to have a team of researchers taking part in, and contributing to, the outstanding scientific programme of the European Respiratory Society International Congress, taking place in Milan.

Community Involvement

As part of our research development and planning we invite members of the community to work with us. Click here to find out how.

Research

Primary Nasal Epithelial Cells as a Surrogate Cell Culture Model for Type-II Alveolar Cells to Study ABCA-3 Deficiency

ATP Binding Cassette Subfamily A Member 3 (ABCA-3) is a lipid transporter protein highly expressed in type-II alveolar (AT-II) cells. Mutations in ABCA3 can result in severe respiratory disease in infants and children. To study ABCA-3 deficiency in vitro, primary AT-II cells would be the cell culture of choice although sample accessibility is limited. Our aim was to investigate the suitability of primary nasal epithelial cells, as a surrogate culture model for AT-II cells, to study ABCA-3 deficiency.

Research

Dysregulated Notch Signaling in the Airway Epithelium of Children with Wheeze

The airway epithelium of children with wheeze is characterized by defective repair that contributes to disease pathobiology. Dysregulation of developmental processes controlled by Notch has been identified in chronic asthma. However, its role in airway epithelial cells of young children with wheeze, particularly during repair, is yet to be determined.

Research

Phage therapy for multi-drug resistant respiratory tract infections

The emergence of multi-drug resistant (MDR) bacteria is recognised today as one of the greatest challenges to public health. As traditional antimicrobials are becoming ineffective and research into new antibiotics is diminishing, a number of alternative treatments for MDR bacteria have been receiving greater attention. Bacteriophage therapies are being revisited and present a promising opportunity to reduce the burden of bacterial infection in this post-antibiotic era.

Research

Differential cell counts using center-point networks achieves human-level accuracy and efficiency over segmentation

Differential cell counts is a challenging task when applying computer vision algorithms to pathology. Existing approaches to train cell recognition require high availability of multi-class segmentation and/or bounding box annotations and suffer in performance when objects are tightly clustered.

Research

Associations between respiratory and vascular function in early childhood

The link between respiratory and vascular health is well documented in adult populations. Impaired lung function is consistently associated with thicker arteries and higher incidence of cardiovascular disease. However, there are limited data on this relationship in young children and the studies that exist have focussed on populations at high risk of cardiorespiratory morbidity.