This is our December update of news from the Respitech group at the WIMR.
The Respiratory Technology Team at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research celebrate their first year of operation. The group has achieved a lot in the past 12 months. We have grown since January and have had 22 research personal come through our doors. We have published 28 peer reviewed articles, sourced funding for a number of projects and have established wider initiatives within the community. To highlight some of the achievements over the past year the group has prepared an annual report outlining some of the initiatives and key performance outcomes. The report that can be downloaded here. Importantly, the group has partaken in a number of social events including, cook-ups, the famous hot pot adventure, all-important pub trips and a harbour cruise. To learn more about the social side of RespiTech you can always like us on Facebook - www.facebook.com/RespiTech
In December, members of our group travelled to Edinburgh to participate at the Drug Delivery to the Lungs Conference, DDL24. Jesslynn Ooi, John Chan and Judy Loo were nominated to speak at the prestigious Pat Burnell New investigator award session. Prior to DDL, the group participated in the first ECR2STAR workshop in London. The conference was a great success and the team will be involved in developing new and and exciting early career programs in the coming year.
John Chan received a series of awards this month, including the Royal Society of NSW scholarship and best speaker at the AFPS conference in Korea. Meanwhile, YY (Hui Xin Ong) was awarded her PhD at The University of Sydney. YY was awarded an European Respiratory Society Postdoctoral fellowship and will move to the UK in early 2014 to commence a clinical focussed research project with Prof Joy Conway’s group in the area of medical imaging.
RespiTech 2013 Report.
Also of note this month, the group announced the ISAM/Woolcock 2014 Joint Conference and workshop to be hosted in Sydney in September. The theme of the conference and further details will be announced in January via the Woolcock and ISAM websites.
Lastly, we would like to congratulate members of the group for publishing 4 peer reviewed articles this month. John published a review with Daniela entitled ‘An update on the use of rifapentine for tuberculosis therapy’ in Expert Opinion on Drug Delivery. Mehra was the first author on a publication in Pharmaceutical Research entitled ‘In vitro cell integrated impactor deposition methodology for the study of aerodynamically relevant size fractions from commercial pressurised metered dose inhalers’. This article describes the establishment and validation of a modified Anderson Cascade impactor for study drug transport across lung epithelia. Jesslynn published two articles as first author. Firstly, she published an education article entitled ‘Graphing software for medical writers in the Journal of Medical Writing. Secondly, she published an article in Pharmaceutical Research entitled ‘Isothermal Calorimetry: A predictive tool to model drug-propellant interactions in pressurized metered dose systems’. This later article focusses on realtime monitoring of phase transitions in pMDI systems.
The group has come a long way in 2013 and we thank all our supporters and followers. We wish everyone a prosperous 2014 and look forward to the year ahead.
