We celebrate Medical Research Week with a live outside broadcast from the Mind and Body Gallery at Melbourne Museum (commissioned by Australian Society of Medical Research).
- Fay Khong, Ph.D student at St Vincent’s Hospital, drops by to chat about her research into the effect of diabetes on the heart.
- Dr Tom Brodnicki from the Walter & Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research discusses environmental and genetic factors that contribute to juvenile diabetes, as well as his non-obese diabetic (NAD) mouse model.
- Dr Vance Matthews from the Baker Heart & Diabetes Institute looks at the link between obesity and diabetes, as well as his research into overcoming insulin resistance.
- Dr Andi also finds that the back of Chris KP’s hand is chock-a-block with pain sensors, oil glands, nerves, sweat glands, blood vessels – and quite a few hairs.
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More detail….
Name: Fay Lin Khong, PhD student
Institute: Department of Medicine, St Vincent’s Hospital
Project: Diabetes has been identified as an independent risk factor for the development of cardiovascular complications. A large body of evidence suggests that diabetic patients exhibit impaired relaxation of the heart i.e. the ability to suck blood back into the heart due to scarring. This ultimately leads to heart failure. Using an experimental model of diabetic heart failure which displays the structural and functional changes as seen in humans, we aim to evaluate the effect of novel therapeutics strategies that prevent the development or progression of heart failure.
Name: Dr Tom Brodnicki, Special Fellow, Laboratory Head – Immunogenetics
Institute: The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute
Project: My research interests are focused on how particular genetic and environmental factors contribute to juvenile diabetes. While recent progress for disease gene discovery is encouraging, it is not known why the incidence for certain diseases, such as juvenile diabetes, is rising in developed countries, including Australia. Studies to identify the underlying factors for this phenomenon are very difficult in human patients. Instead, I’ve turned to a unique animal model, called the NOD mouse, which develops diabetes similar to children. My group is in the process of using different strategies (eg congenic mice, transposons, listeriosis) to better understand the genetic architecture of diabetes susceptibility and how infection might alter diabetes onset in NOD mice. It is anticipated that such studies will help discover cellular and molecular pathways that contribute to the development and/or prevention of diabetes in humans.
Name: Dr Vance Matthews, NHMRC Career Development Fellow and Group Leader (Pro-inflammatory cytokines and insulin resistance), Cellular and Molecular Metabolism Laboratory
Institute: Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute
Project: Overnutrition promotes obesity, which greatly increases the risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. As obesity is a global epidemic with unceasing rise in prevalence, the research of Dr Matthews is aimed at identifying agents that can decrease body weight and improve insulin sensitivity. Two important signalling cascades currently being studied in important metabolic tissues such as liver, muscle and adipose tissue are those of glycoprotein 130 and brain derived neurotrophic factor signalling.
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Direct podcast download: Einstein-A-Go-Go-20090531.mp3
Tags: asmr, medical research week
