Congratulations to our recently completed PhD students!

L-R: Antonia Reale, Himawan Fernando and Sabrina Salberg

Congratulations to our recently completed PhD students Antonia Reale, Himawan Madhumantha Fernando and Sabrina Salberg! See below for their thesis topics, departments and supervisors.
Antonia Reale

• Department: Australian Centre for Blood Diseases
• Thesis title: Understanding the Roles of Extracellular Vesicles in Multiple Myeloma
• Supervisors: Professor Andrew Spencer, Dr Tiffany  Khong
  

Dr Himawan Fernando

• Department: Medicine
• Thesis title: Characterising the opioid-oral P2Y12 inhibitor drug interaction in the context of coronary artery disease and the evaluation of intravenous lignocaine as an alternative analgesic to opioids
• Supervisors: Professor Karlheinz Peter, Associate Professor Dion Stub
  

Synopsis:
This thesis explores a concerning drug interaction between opioids like morphine and blood thinners that are critically important for patients suffering a heart attack. This interaction is better characterised by a series of new studies that build our understanding of the potential significance of this interaction and its potential consequences. A solution to this problem is then tested whereby an alternative non-opioid painkiller called lignocaine is put to the test in two clinical trials to determine if it can be a safe and effective alternative to the opioid, fentanyl in patients suffering a heart attack.


Sabrina Salberg 

• Department: Neuroscience
• Supervisors: Professor Richelle Mychasiuk, Dr Glenn Yamakawa 
• Thesis title: Pain in the Developing Brain: Early Life Adversities that Affect the Development of Chronic Pain in Adolescence

Synopsis:
Chronic pain is a public health epidemic with 20% of youth that undergo surgery or sustain a mild brain injury suffering from persisting pain. Chronic pain has limited effective treatment options and often arises from an unknown cause. However, I have demonstrated that early life adversities, such as adverse childhood experiences and high-fat high-sugar diets, can increase risk for chronic pain by increasing inflammation and immune activation, and that females exhibit greater pain responses than males. Interestingly, the underlying mechanisms driving the chronification of pain differed between males and females, necessitating further investigation into the sexual dimorphism of persistent pain.