Our Role & Impact

Changes to the nervous system during chronic pain remain poorly understood. What we do know is that nerve cells in the spinal cord play an important role in pain signalling because the spinal cord is the first site where information from our bodies is processed to ultimately shape sensory experience.

Magnetic resonance imaging is not only important in the diagnosis of multiple sclerosis but also to monitor therapy. New treatment options are very effective in reducing inflammation in MS and significantly reducing relapse rate.

Patients recovering from stroke often report high and unremitting levels of psychological stress. Clinically, the presence of stress throughout the recovery process is highly significant, as stress hormones, most notably cortisol, are known to impair multiple aspects of brain repair including cortical remodelling, angiogenesis, and neurogenesis.

Sitting for long periods of time each day increases the risk of cardiovascular disease. Stroke survivors living at home spend 75% of their waking hours sitting down, which is much higher than healthy people of a similar age, making them at particularly high risk.

Neuropathic pain is a complex, chronic and debilitating pain that often accompanies diseases such as multiple sclerosis, diabetes, peripheral nerve injury and stroke. Our understanding of neuropathic pain is poor and as such is difficult to treat.

Dementia and cogitive decline are major concerns for our ageing population. Cholesterol is a promminent risk factor for Alzheimer's Disease. If a person has a particular form of the cholesterol carrying protein Apolipoprotein E (ApoE) their chances of developing Alzheimer's Disease rise 15 fold.

Metastatic pancreatic cancer has a low survival rate and even with the best existing therapies the survival is less than a year. Despite advances in treatments and outcomes for other cancers, this has not happened for pancreatic cancer with no advances in mortality reduction observed over the past decade. This grim outlook drives our research, which focuses on developing novel diagnostic strategies for pancreatic cancer.

The Bioimpedence Scales are essentially a pair of 'fancy' scales that measure the density of body tissue to predict body mass - amount and composition. This is important because we know the relative amounts of fat and lean tissue in a patient affect how much of a drug gets to a particular site like the tumour and also determines how long it stays there and how the drug is released over time.

Project Goal - To develop a test for predicting ovarian cancer response/resistance to cisplatin chemotherapy that can be quickly implemented in clincial centres. Such a test would let the doctor know that the patient is becoming resistant to cisplatin chemotherapy. At this stage there is no test available meaning some people remain on the wrong treatment protocol for the course of their treatment, suffereing toxic side effects for no benefit. The sooner treatment is switched the higher the chance that the patient will respond. 

Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Brain cancer is the 15th most common cancer in the world, and has one of the worst survival rates of all cancer types, with only approximately half of patients surviving for one year post-diagnosis. This poor survival rate highlights that new treatments for brain cancer are urgently required.

Pregnancy is like a stress test, revealing a woman's long term risk to developing Type II Diabetes. Post delivery is the ideal time to address lifestyle risk factors but many women with gestational diabetes report a lack of support at this crucial time.

Kirrilly is an Accredited Practising Dietician, and was recently awarded her PhD investigating whether food addiction exists in young Australian adults.

This scholarship will support Jessica’s PhD, titled “Optimising lipid-lowering ability of dietary phytosterols for reducing cardiovascular disease risk”.

The ‘Gomeroi Gayaanggal’ Project to provide a holistic approach to social and emotional wellbeing within the Indigenous communities of Tamworth and Walgett, and will add Taree and Forster in Stage 2.  

Background: Pregnancy is a precious event offering a human value to the biosphere. It is special to every woman and societal unit. Women suffer in comparison with men over a wide spectrum of human activity. The health situation of women in Nepal is poor. Maternal mortality in Nepal is among the highest in Asia (over 190/100,000 live births) and one of the worst ten in the world (WHO 2015).

More than 57,000 Australian women were diagnosed with some form of cancer in 2015. But there is the unavoidable secondary impact on fertility for those women, a potentially devastating legacy of their treatment following entry into disease remission.

Sarah’s research aims to improve the understanding of normal placenta development, and what might be going wrong in women who go on to develop pregnancy complications.

Jacqueline’s PhD is focussed on better understanding contraceptive use in Australia. While broad patterns of contraceptive usage are clear, in Australia particularly, we know little about women’s preferences for certain methods, how women make decisions about what method to use and how this translates to contraceptive practices in real life.

If persistent, painful ear infections of childhood can lead to long-term hearing and learning difficulties. Our multidisciplinary team has established an international reputation for studies of the slowly-growing Alloiococcus otitidis, present in over half of chronic ear infections among Indigenous and non-Indigenous children and some acute infections in which none of the usual bacterial pathogens that cause middle ear infection can be detected.

Smoking leads to lung inflammation that causes emphysema - a major health problem in Australia. Emphysema progressively declines even if smoking stops and there are no treatments.

Cognitive-Behaviour Therapy, or CBT, is one of the few effective therapies for children with functional abdominal pain. But CBT sessions can be costly and difficult to access, particularly as multiple sessions are required.

Children born to mothers with asthma are three times more likely to develop asthma themselves than those with asthmatic fathers, which suggests that a risk factor extends beyond genetics. There is emerging evidence that bacteria in the infant’s gut can impact immune function and contribute to the types of immune responses that are seen in asthma.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is a condition of persistent, progressive lung destruction caused by inhalation of damaging particles. Many current treatments are expensive, come with side-effects, or have very little effect on some patients.

Current therapies prevent only ~40% of asthma exacerbations. These figures are in the context of clinical trials - real life asthma exacerbations are even less likely to be prevented.