The Ramaciotti Health Investment Grants are awarded to individuals in universities, public hospitals or institutes, and contribute towards the undertaking of health or medical research with a potential path to clinical application within five years.
Dr Ooi's research focuses on developing a treatment for lupus that would inhibit the inflammatory immune response against a specific protein, referred to as the Smith (Sm) antigen, without the detrimental side effects of conventional treatments.
Lupus is a common autoimmune disease that affects mainly women of childbearing age and occurs because the immune system mistakenly attacks proteins within a person’s own cell nucleus. Patients display multi-organ involvement and have a need for lifelong global immune suppressive treatments, which are toxic and increase their risk of infections. Autoreactivity against the Sm antigen leads to more severe disease manifestations; in particular, most patients develop end stage kidney disease.
Dr Ooi’s laboratory has developed the ability to generate cells that can specifically inhibit inflammatory responses against the Sm antigen, with the Ramaciotti grant now enabling the testing of this new form of therapy using cells from lupus patients.
Using blood samples from patients within the Australian Lupus Registry, Dr Ooi will generate Sm-specific regulatory cells and test their effectiveness in in-vitro culture assays and in an in-vivo humanised model of disease, which will form the basis for pursuing clinical trials.
On receiving the grant Dr Ooi said, "I am very grateful to the Ramaciotti Foundation for this opportunity to develop regulatory cell based trials for lupus. I would like to thank A/Prof. Alberta Hoi and Prof. Eric Morand for working together with me on this proposal, and I am very much looking forward to starting work on the project."
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