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| Kim O'Sullivan |
Monash
University PhD student and research assistant Kim O’Sullivan received the highly
competitive award for her research into vasculitis, an autoimmune disease that
damages the kidneys, last month at the Asia-Pacific Society of Nephrology in
Perth.
Kim
presented her findings at the ANZSN Annual Scientific Meeting that an enzyme
called deoxyribonuclease 1 (or DNase 1) could be a potential therapeutic in
patients with anti-neutrophil
cytoplasmic antibody (ANCA) associated vasculitis.
“Current
treatment options for vasculitis include corticosteroids and chemotherapy drugs.
These drugs suppress the immune system and aim to control inflammation, but
have very significant side effects,” said senior investigator and Monash Health
nephrologist Professor Stephen Holdsworth.
“Kim’s work helps us better understand the mechanism of disease in ANCA
vasculitis in order to define specific, less toxic therapies for this disease.”
“Immune cells central to this disease—neutrophils—throw out web-like
structures called NETs,” said Professor Holdsworth.
“In infections, these NETs trap bacteria—making them very useful, but in
vasculitis they are bad, as they promote inflammation and cause kidney damage.”
“Kim’s work has shown that these NETs are prominent in humans with
vasculitis, and she has now found that DNAse 1, a natural enzyme already used
to treat humans with other conditions, can effectively limit kidney injury in
vasculitis.”
“Finding targeted treatments that produce fewer side-effects and greater
quality of life is a key aspect of our work,” said Kim.
Kim said it
was very satisfying to have her hard work recognised.
“Receiving
this award made the time spent away from my three children, conducting the
experiments, and preparing for the conference worthwhile,” said Kim.
“Being selected as a finalist enabled my research to
be heard at a national and international level as the conference was held this
year in conjunction with the Asia-Pacific Congress of Nephrology.”
The four finalists
in this award were all from Monash University, with Monash Centre for
Inflammatory Diseases PhD students Megan Huynh and Sharmilla Ramassur also
receiving awards.
Professor Holdsworth
said the ongoing success of the Centre for Inflammatory Diseases in kidney
research is due both to the intelligent hard-working students in the Centre, as
well as the outstanding science being promoted by the Centre’s Chief
Investigators.
We are looking for outstanding candidates to undertake PhD
studies in the field of epidemiology. This PhD research will be based at
Synergy in the Department of Psychiatry at Monash University. The Project is a
longitudinal population study of recently arrived refugees to identify risk and
protective factors for mental health and other outcomes.
