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10 11 > Overview // AR 2006
Infection and Immunity
We are examining important viruses and bacteria and how they interact
with the immune system. We are also looking at how to manipulate the
immune system for transplantation.
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The Infection and Immunity division is investigating serious
infectious diseases and pathogens, oral infection, organ
transplantation, autoimmunity and other immune disorders.
The Centre for Infectious Diseases and Microbiology
conducts research on the identification, treatment and
prevention of serious infectious diseases. It also provides
training and education to health care professionals, patients
and the community in managing the spread of these diseases.
A major research area is concentrating on Cryptococcus,
a fungus that causes meningitis and other brain and lung
infections. Researchers aim to define how the organism enter
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the body and triggers the disease to develop new treatments
against it.
Work over the past year has provided further insight into
how a recently discovered enzyme, phospholipase B (PLB),
enables Cryptococcusto to penetrate a patient’s tissue.
As investigations progress, researchers hope to use PLB
as a target for new drug treatments that may eliminate
cryptococcal infection and several other important fungibased
diseases.
Research in new antifungal drug treatments has led to the
identification of three classes of drugs that may inhibit the
effect of PLB. One of these drugs, Miltefosine, is already
being used in developing countries to kill a parasite that causes
leishmaniasis. Laboratory tests have also shown Miltefosine to
kill a number of fungi, including those resistant to available
drugs. The centre aims to improve Miltefosine’s effect while
reducing some of its current side effects. Collaborations are
being sought overseas to conduct a trial of Miltefosine to
treat cryptococcosis, which has become a major problem for
patients with AIDS in developing countries.
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With the support of a five-year NHMRC Centre of Clinical
Research Excellence (CCRE) grant (2005-09), research
continues to improve outcomes for immunocompromised
patients with blood malignancies. One new strategy aimed
at bone marrow transplant patients is investigating the effects
of vaccinating bone marrow donors’ cells so that immunity
can develop before the transplant takes place, reducing the
recipient’s risk of infection following the procedure.
This year, the centre began the Community Respiratory Virus
Project to understand how coughs, flu, colds, bronchitis or
pneumonia are being transmitted in the hospital wards to
patients with blood malignancies or who are undergoing
transplants. Results so far have been very positive with some
transmission patterns being identified between patients, their
families and staff. This has led to strict protocols being set
(including a flu vaccination program for patients and their
families) to prevent the spread of flu and other respiratory
viruses. An education program developed for patients and
their families has successfully incorporated information about
the impact of these infections upon the patients.
Over the past year, researchers working in rapid diagnostics
have characterized a new antibiotic resistant gene relevant to
serious infections in Australian intensive care units (ICUs).
Using newly created procedures for analysis, researchers
hope to simultaneously identify bacteria causing disease and
the genes associated with their resistance. These advanced
diagnostic methods will mean strategies can be implemented
faster than currently possible to prevent bacteria from
being transmitted to ICU patients, and treatments can be
administered more rapidly in the event of infection.
The Centre for Transplant and Renal Research is
internationally reputed for its investigations into causes,
treatments and cures for progressive renal disease and
transplantation.
More than 150,000 Australians have Type 1 diabetes (also
known as juvenile or insulin-dependent diabetes). These
patients are at risk of developing serious complications
including kidney failure. If diabetic control can be improved
then the incidence of these complications can be reduced.
The centre proposes a radically new treatment where blood
sugar levels are nomalised by transplanting the insulin
producing cells, rather than using the imperfect treatment of
insulin injections.
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The centre is continuing to make important breakthroughs
in this field of study, which includes investigations of
human pancreatic islet cell transplantation to patients and
the production of alternative sources of islet cells through
xenotransplantation – the transplantation or grafting of cells,
tissues and organs from one species to another.
Researchers at the centre were the first to establish a successful
clinical pancreatic islet cell transplant program in Australia
proving that infusing patients with these cells provides
much better control of diabetes than the traditional insulin
injection therapy.
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