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| Dr Sarah Jones |
Dr Sarah
Jones has received a grant from the Rebecca L Cooper Medical
Research Foundation, providing $25,000 seed funding to create an immune system
in a micro particle in collaboration with Associate Professor John Forsythe at
Monash Engineering.
“Excitement
in medical research peaks when old problems of biology can be solved by modern
techniques,” said Dr Jones, postdoctoral research fellow in the Lupus and
Arthritis Research Group, Centre for Inflammatory Diseases.
The
re-creation of organs in the lab setting, termed “organoids”, is a key
technique that is allowing major advances to be made in medical research.
“We have
designed a way to create a miniature immune system organoid, encapsulated in a
microparticle, called an Immunosphere,” said Dr Jones.
“Within
the Immunosphere we will be able to recapitulate the events that occur to
produce antibodies, which are critical for immunity against invading pathogens
and which are damaging in the case of autoimmune diseases.”
Dr Jones
said the Immunosphere will provide a model system for studying antibody
production which, despite its importance for human health, has previously been
inherently difficult to study.
The
Immunosphere will also be a platform for testing new drugs designed to improve
antibody production to achieve better outcomes from vaccination, or to block it
for treatment of autoimmune diseases, which are currently common, serious and
incurable.
“The
potential applications for the Immunosphere system are extremely important and very
exciting,” said Dr Jones.
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