Monash program offering at-home care for patients with lung and respiratory conditions

Professor Anne Holland with a lung patient

by Tania Ewing

One of the questions raised by the COVID-19 pandemic is how best to manage both non-COVID and COVID patients with lung conditions while they remain in home isolation.

A home-based program developed by Monash researcher, Professor Anne Holland, is gaining global attention because it is designed to assist clinicians with developing at-home rehabilitation programs for people with respiratory illness.

Cracking the COVID-19 immunity code

Dr James McMahon, COVID-19 biobank

development lead

Monash University’s Dr James McMahon, an infectious disease expert and hospital clinician at The Alfred and Monash Health, is leading the development of a biobank aimed at cracking the immunity code of COVID-19.

The biobank enables the collection of clinical information along with blood and respiratory swabs from COVID-19 patients in Melbourne to be thoroughly tested to establish how the virus behaves in different people.

24 March - 6 April 2020 Central Clinical School recent publications

South Indian rural residents buck the trend of hypertension, study finds.

Image: George Institute for Global Health

Recent publications as notified by PubMed during the fortnight 24 March - 6 April from Central Clinical School affiliated researchers in the following departments. This is not a comprehensive list:

• Allergy, Immunology and Respiratory Medicine
• Australian Centre for Blood Diseases
• Diabetes
• Gastroenterology
• Infectious Diseases
• Melbourne Sexual Health Centre
• Neuroscience
• Surgery & National Trauma Research Institute
  

Welcome to Dr Ian Harding, Department of Neuroscience

Dr Ian Harding

Welcome to Dr Ian Harding, who started with the Department of Neuroscience in 2020. He leads the Mechanisms of Neurodegeneration research group in the department and Monash Biomedical Imaging. Ian uses magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) to investigate and track brain changes in people with neurodegenerative diseases.

This work principally focusses on individuals with inherited subcortical diseases, including Friedreich ataxia, Spinocerebellar ataxias, and Huntington’s disease. Additional work in other neurodegenerative disorders and in preclinical animal models is also being undertaken with his  collaborators.

The broad aims of the group's research include biological phenotyping, such as describing changes in brain structure and function, and mechanistic inferences, including cellular/molecular-level measurements of inflammation, oxidative stress, and metabolic dysfunction.

Ben Sinclair wins Public Vote in Victoria for global science competition FameLab video!

See Dr Ben Sinclair's Famelab video

Monash University neuroscientist, Dr Ben Sinclair, has been awarded first place in the public vote segment of Victorian applicants by the global science competition FameLab for his engaging video presentation on using exercise as a treatment for brain disease.

Thanks to everyone who voted for Ben!

International study highlights diabetes risks in COVID-19

Professor Paul Zimmet AO

by Charisse Ede

An international review involving Monash University has found elderly people with diabetes who contract COVID-19 are at a much higher risk of dying from the disease - and the virus may actually trigger the onset of diabetes in normally healthy people.

The study, published in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology, found that depending on the global region, 20 to 50 percent of patients diagnosed with COVID-19 during the pandemic had diabetes.

Numbercrunching to find a stable target for inhibiting the SARS-CoV-2 virus

The heart-shaped SARS-CoV-2 main protease
 consists of two protomers (blue and grey),
and is involved in processing viral polyproteins
A prototypical small molecule inhibitor (yellow)
is docked to the active site of the protease.

In the absence of a vaccine or an approved effective therapy against COVD-19, there is an interest in repositioning existing drugs or developing new inhibitors against viral targets.

A collaborative project between Monash and RMIT Universities is aimed at identifying and validating small molecules that can interact with or inhibit the active site of the SARS-CoV-2 main protease.