Meet Fernando Gordillo Altamirano

Dr Fernando Gordillo Altamirano completed his medical training in his native Ecuador, but knew that he wanted to pursue a career in research rather than clinical practice. That decision brought him to Australia, where he completed further study including a Masters degree and PhD before joining Central Clinical School’s Department of Infectious Diseases as a postdoctoral researcher last year. 

Can you tell us about your work?

I kill superbugs! Superbugs are bacteria that have become resistant to antibiotics. They are increasingly common in hospitals, where they can infect the most vulnerable patients, and doctors struggle to treat these infections. I work on a method called phage therapy. Phages are viruses: good viruses! Instead of harming or killing human cells, phages only kill bacteria. So, we can treat superbug infections using these viruses, killing the bacteria and saving the patients.

How did you become interested in phage research?

As I was ‘shopping around’ for PhD projects, I met my eventual supervisor, a world leader in phage research: Associate Professor Jeremy Barr of Monash University’s School of Biological Sciences. Before that, I had only briefly learned about phages but had never imagined we could use them to treat infections in humans. Jeremy’s passion ignited my love for phages. It’s thrilling to be working in research where I can apply my medical knowledge and my laboratory expertise simultaneously. 

Promotion and new appointment for epilepsy

Congratulations to Dr Andrew Neal, who has been appointed to succeed Professor Patrick Kwan as Director of Epilepsy, Alfred Health, and also promoted to Associate Professor.

Associate Professor Neal joined Alfred Health and Central Clinical School in 2019 as a consultant Neurologist and Epileptologist, lead for the Alfred Advanced Epilepsy Surgery Program and as a research fellow in CCS’s Department of Neuroscience. He also served as Deputy Director of Epilepsy at Alfred Health from 2020. 

A/Prof Neal is a national leader in advanced epilepsy surgery, in particular stereoelectroencephalography (SEEG). SEEG involves the surgical implantation of electrodes into the brain to understand the role of brain networks in the pathophysiology of drug-resistant epilepsy and its associated neurocognitive deficits.

Meet Dr Anouk von Borstel

A lecturer’s enthusiasm for immunology rubbed off on Anouk during her undergraduate studies, and she pursued this interest in her Masters of Science and PhD. Having maintained her passion for translational immunology and experiencing firsthand the excitement of making new discoveries, translational research became the common thread throughout her scientific career. She left her native Netherlands to join a structural biology lab at Monash University’s Biomedical Discovery Institute (BDI) in 2018, where she published two lead author papers and co-authored nine more, before joining the Allergy and Clinical Immunology Laboratory within Central Clinical School’s Department of Immunology. There she is currently focused on studying the allergic immune response and how this is altered when patients are treated with allergen immunotherapy.

How did you become interested in immunology? What excites you about this area?

My passion for immunology began during my lectures in my BSc studies, where I was fortunate to have a professor whose enthusiasm for the subject was infectious. His ability to convey the complexities of the immune system with true passion left me amazed and wanting to learn more about it.

What truly excites me about this area is the vast amount of uncharted territory. Despite significant progress, there is still so much we don’t fully understand about the immune system. Moreover, the prospect of contributing to the growing body of knowledge and making a positive impact on human health keeps me motivated.

Meet Lizzie Thomas

Dr Elizabeth (Lizzie) Thomas has been at Central Clinical School for almost a decade, having completed her Honours and PhD at the School before staying on as a researcher. She is currently the manager of the Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) Clinical Research Unit at the Monash Alfred Psychiatry Research Centre (MAPrc) and a research fellow at the HER Centre Australia. 

How did you become interested in mental health? What excites you about this area?

I initially got into mental health research as I wanted an Honours project that was more clinical rather than lab based. While my research focus has evolved throughout my time at MAPrc, my passion for mental health and cognition has remained constant, whether it be in schizophrenia as part of my PhD, in relation to hormonal fluctuations in women or in TMS. Studying cognition allows me to explore the intricacies of memory, attention, decision-making, and problem-solving, all of which I find fascinating!

Immunology researcher wins early career research prize

Congratulations to Dr Paul Gill, who has been awarded the Glenn Gibson Early Career Research Prize from the International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics (ISAPP). 

The award recognises the work Dr Gill conducted as part of his PhD, examining the interaction between dietary metabolites short-chain fatty acids and the human immune system. 

“I’m proud that all the work I did as a PhD student in the Department of Gastroenterology has been recognised by the International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics,” Dr Gill said. 

“My research found that a high fibre diet that increases metabolites generated by the gut microbiota can alter the immune system of healthy people. This provides us with a potential approach for treating patients with inflammatory conditions using a high fibre diet.”

Dr Gill received the award at the ISAPP Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado, where he also gave a talk on investigating the effects of short-chain fatty acids on the immune system and gut microbiota of healthy humans.

“The ISAPP meeting was a great experience for me as an Early Career Researcher. I interacted with experts in the field and was involved in a panel discussion about the evidence for probiotics benefiting human health. This gave me a new insight into how scientific organisations can be involved in promoting evidence-based health advice” 

Since completing his PhD, Dr Gill has joined the Department of Immunology as a research fellow. He is currently investigating the immune response to the COVID-19 vaccines, particularly in immunosuppressed patients, as part of the PROPHECY study. 

Media round-up: A/Prof Gemma Sharp discusses new guidelines for cosmetic surgery practice

From 1 July 2023, new guidelines for the regulation of cosmetic surgery practice came into effect in Australia. This was in response to a number of complaints made against cosmetic surgeons in the last few years following patients experiencing complications of both a physical and psychological nature. 

The new guidelines stipulate that people seeking cosmetic surgery must have a referral from their GP and undergo mental health screening. Previously, the mental health screening was only suggested, but it is now compulsory. 

Associate Professor Gemma Sharp of the Department of Neuroscience served as the lead expert for the world-first clinical guidelines for mental health assessment of people seeking cosmetic surgery back in 2018, which have since been adopted internationally. She subsequently served as the lead expert again in the 2023 revision of these guidelines in preparation of the new regulations coming into place in Australia. 

A/Prof Sharp spoke to a number of media outlets about the likely impacts of these new regulations. 

ABC TV News Breakfast (video)

New cosmetic surgery rules leave doctors divided (ABC News radio)

Beauty industry set for makeover with more than 1 billion at stake (Canberra Times)

Why so many people including the Kardashians have plastic surgery regret (The Age)

PhD student wins Early Career Top Paper Abstract

Courtney McLean

PhD student Courtney McLean from the Department of Neuroscience has been awarded an Academy of Eating Disorders Early Career Top Abstract Award for her paper ‘Disordered Eating and the Meat-Avoidance Spectrum: A Systematic Review and Clinical Implications’.

This research looked to examine the association between eating disorders and vegetarian and vegan diets. It has long been thought that vegetarianism and veganism may be related to an increased risk of disordered eating due to the cognitive effort required to adhere to a restricted diet. 

In a systematic review of 48 studies, Courtney and her co-authors Associate Professor Gemma Sharp and Professor Jayashri Kulkarni found no consensus as to whether vegetarianism or veganism is associated with higher levels of disordered eating. 

The authors note that additional research is very much needed to unpack the broad range of conflicting findings highlighted within the systematic review. The research notes a number of methodological concerns within the literature, such as extremely small sample sizes and combining vegetarian and vegan groups together which could potentially mask true associations between each group. 

The review did however show that vegetarianism and veganism appear to be associated with greater orthorexia nervosa pathology, a newly coined type of eating disorder not formally diagnosable but characterised by a fixation on eating ‘healthy’ and ‘pure’ foods. 

“Future research must focus on conducting longitudinal research to track the unique eating behaviours and attitudes of vegetarians and vegans over time,” Courtney said. “For example, it would be useful to explore the impact of length, onset, and scope of dietary adherence to begin to be able to establish a potential causal or bidirectional relationship between these groups. This will, in turn, guide evidence-based treatment approaches for these growing dietary minorities.”

Courtney accepted the Top Abstract Award at the Academy for Eating Disorders international conference in Washington DC, where she also presented her PhD research findings. 

"It was an absolute delight to attend and present at this conference - the first international conference of my PhD! I had the opportunity to present each of the three research projects related to my PhD. These projects progressively build upon the findings of each other so attendees had the opportunity to follow my research right from its inception.” 

“It was also wonderful to hear from the wide range of international speakers at the conference. There are many areas within the eating disorder field that continue to be under researched, but to see attendees from across many professional backgrounds come together with a vision of a world without eating disorders was inspiring. I particularly enjoyed the focused inclusion of lived experience voices who were integrated into each segment of the conference."

Part of the Department of Neuroscience’s Sharp Group, Courtney’s PhD broadly seeks to explore the efficacy of eating disorder tools in measuring eating pathology in vegetarian and vegan groups. As part of this, she is developing a novel eating disorder screening tool to identify eating disorder symptoms in individuals following a vegetarian and vegan diet. This tool will be the first of its kind to specifically target this growing dietary group, which will be co-designed with diverse participant groups, including lived eating disorder voices, dieticians, and psychologists.