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Research

Pulmonary bacteriophage and cystic fibrosis airway mucus: friends or foes?

For those born with cystic fibrosis (CF), hyper-concentrated mucus with a dysfunctional structure significantly impacts CF airways, providing a perfect environment for bacterial colonization and subsequent chronic infection. Early treatment with antibiotics limits the prevalence of bacterial pathogens but permanently alters the CF airway microenvironment, resulting in antibiotic resistance and other long-term consequences.

Research

Fathers’ preconception smoking and offspring DNA methylation

Experimental studies suggest that exposures may impact respiratory health across generations via epigenetic changes transmitted specifically through male germ cells. Studies in humans are, however, limited. We aim to identify epigenetic marks in offspring associated with father's preconception smoking.

Research

Ventilatory response and stability of oxygen saturation during a hypoxic challenge in very preterm infants

Preterm infants have immature control of breathing and impaired pulmonary gas exchange. We hypothesized that infants with bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) have a blunted ventilatory response and peripheral oxygen saturation (SpO2 ) instability during a hypoxic challenge.

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

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.

Aboriginal Respiratory Health

Respiratory illness accounts for 12% of the age-standardised gap in mortality between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

Artificial Intelligence

The Artificial Intelligence team at the Wal-yan Respiratory Research Centre is dedicated to delivering AI solutions for major challenges in respiratory healthcare and research.

Focus areas for the Centre

Learn more about the Focus areas for the Wal-yan Respiratory Centre

News & Events

300th participant recruited to crucial respiratory research program

A research program, which enables over 25 important respiratory research studies to be undertaken, celebrated the recruitment of its 300th participant on 14 December 2022.