COVID-19 update from Prof Allen Cheng: MJA podcast 9 March 2020

Image: Coronavirus (MJA)

COVID-19 in Australia, with Professor Allen Cheng

MJA Podcasts 2020 Episode 8:  Vol 212, Issue 5: 9 March, 2020.

Professor Allen Cheng is Director of the Infection Prevention and Healthcare Epidemiology Unit at Alfred Health in Melbourne. He discusses how COVID-19 may behave in Australia and how doctors can protect themselves as well as patients. With MJA news and online editor Cate Swannell. 16 mins, 0 secs.

Link: www.mja.com.au/podcast/212/5/mja-podcasts-2020-episode-8-covid-19-australia-prof-allen-cheng

Eric Chow and Erica Wood win NHMRC accolade!

Associate Professor Eric Chow (left) and

Professor Erica Wood (right)

National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Research Excellence Awards are awarded annually to top-ranked researchers and teams following peer review of applications to NHMRC’s highly competitive grant schemes.

The 2019 awards have been made to two Monash University researchers, Associate Professor Eric Chow and Professor Erica Wood, both from the Sub-Faculty of Translational Medicine and Public Health in the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences.

The NHMRC supports their research preventing STIs (Chow) and understanding how to improve blood transfusion outcomes (Wood). See below for detail.

Study highlights gap in ageing brain research

L-R: Dr Mujun Sun (first author) and A/Prof

Sandy Shultz (last author)

by Anne Crawford

Neurological conditions such as traumatic brain injury, stroke, Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's disease are leading causes of morbidity and mortality affecting millions of people worldwide. Yet the majority of clinical trials testing drugs for these common conditions have failed.

The Department of Neuroscience’s Associate Professor Sandy Shultz is among a growing number of scientists asking whether the failure to translate findings of preclinical studies to the clinic is because many patients with these conditions are middle-aged or older, yet most preclinical studies test only young adult animals.

3-9 Mar 2020 Central Clinical School recent publications

What we know so far about COVID-19: Allen Cheng (Monash)
and Deborah Williamson (Doherty Institute). Image: MJA

Recent publications as notified during the week 3-9 Mar 2020 by PubMed from Central Clinical School affiliated researchers in the following disciplines. This is not a comprehensive list:

• Allergy, Immunology and Respiratory Medicine
• Anaesthesiology & Perioperative Medicine
• Blood Diseases
• Diabetes
• Infectious Diseases
• Immunology and Pathology
• Medicine
• Neuroscience
• Psychiatry
• Sexual Health
• Surgery

Congratulations to our recent PhD graduates!

L-R: Mr Jayashimhan Abhirup and Ms Angela Nguyen

Congratulations to Ms Angela Nguyen, Mr Jayashimhan Abhirup and Mr Michael De Vries, our recent Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) graduates! All three had their PhDs conferred on 4 March 2020.

Ms Angela Nguyen's thesis title is "Characterisation of the murine non-classical MHC I molecule, H2-Q10". She was supervised by Dr Dan Andrews, Department of Immunology and Pathology, and Dr Katharine Goodall, Australian Centre for Blood Diseases.