Smart nanomaterials to revolutionise insulin delivery for diabetes

Associate Professor Christoph Hagemeyer

by Anne Crawford

Type 1 diabetes (T1D), a disease with no cure, currently affects more than 120,000 Australians.

People with T1D are dependent on insulin, a hormone, to help keep their blood-sugar levels from skyrocketing which can lead to long-term complications such as kidney and heart diseases responsible for significant morbidity and mortality.

However, if too much insulin is injected, sugar levels become dangerously low, called hypoglycaemia, resulting in coma or death.

Associate Professor Christoph Hagemeyer, a research group leader in the Australian Centre for Blood Diseases (ACBD), has been granted $944,796 from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) to further research that is generating smart nanoparticles that automatically regulate the optimal amount of insulin available to the body.

Monash scientists in nanomedicine advance

Ms Shweta Jagdale and Associate Professor Christoph Hagemeyer
in the lab.

by Anne Crawford

The emerging field of nanomedicine holds great potential for biomedical discovery and for new forms of treatment for diseases such as heart conditions and cancer. Nanoparticles can fly under the radar of the immune system, which would otherwise identify them as foreign and destroy them, to reach their intended target. They can be used, for example, to efficiently transport a drug to the specific site of disease.

But because the field is so young the possible side-effects of sending these tiny structures into the human body are still unknown.

Monash awarded $1.1M grant to support development of revolutionary type of insulin

L-R: Ms Shweta Jagdale (Lab manager) &
Dr Christoph Hagemeyer in the lab

Monash researcher, Dr Christoph Hagemeyer, has received AUD$1.1 million dollars in funding as part of a multi-million dollar collaborative grant to support the development of a revolutionary type of insulin.

The grant is part of a joint research initiative between the JDRF, leading global organisation funding and advocating for type 1 diabetes (T1D) research, and Sanofi US Services Inc., a subsidiary of Sanofi, one of the leading insulin manufacturers and a global pharmaceutical company. The grant will provide up to USD4.6 million to four research projects taking different approaches to developing glucose responsive insulin (GRIs) therapies for treatment of insulin-dependent diabetes.

Dr Hagemeyer, who is a research group leader in the Australian Centre for Blood Diseases, will work in collaboration with Dr Frank Caruso (University of Melbourne), Dr Jonathan Shaw, Dr Mark Copper and Dr Terri Allen (from Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute) to develop glucose-sensing nanoparticles.

Understanding the design of effective particle-based vaccines against malaria

Malaria kills over half a million people
globally each year. Image: VectorBase

Malaria vaccine research has been ongoing since the 1980s with limited success. However, recent improvements in our understanding of the immune responses required to combat each stage of infection will allow for intelligent design of both antigens and their associated delivery vaccine vehicles/vectors. Synthetic carriers (also known as vectors) are usually particulate and have multiple properties, which can be varied to control how an associated vaccine interacts with the host, and consequently how the immune response develops.