… big thanks to Sally for her amazing cake production for Charlotte’s birthday!

Congratulations to Ms Ambreen Muhammad who was awarded the prestigious Anatomical Society Summer Research Scholarship for her project entitled “Investigating the role of Dishevelled Associated Activator of Morphogenesis 2 (Daam2) in lung development”.

We look forward to welcoming Ambreen to the Dean lab in July.

A new State of the art review in Thorax entitled ‘Regenerative pharmacology for COPD: breathing new life into old lungs’ has been published by Ng-Blichfeldt et al.

Authors discuss the vital importance of increasing our understanding of the cell-specific molecular control of regeneration, the regenerative potential of the human lung and regenerative competencies of patients with
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Regenerative pharmacology for COPD: breathing new life into old lungs. Ng-Blichfeldt, J-P., Reinoud, G., Dean, D., Griffiths, M. & Hind, M.
Thorax Published Online First: 02 April 2019. doi: 10.1136/thoraxjnl-2018-212630

https://thorax.bmj.com/content/early/2019/04/01/thoraxjnl-2018-212630#block-system-main

The annual Alumni Awards recognise outstanding achievements of the University of Sydney alumni community. The awards are bestowed for leadership, innovation and compassion.

Sally was responsible for developing an award-winning, innovative aerosol technology to deliver stem cells directly to lungs.

Sally’s publication ‘Atomized Human Amniotic Mesenchymal Stromal Cells for Direct Delivery to the Airway for Treatment of Lung Injury’
demonstrated that hAMSCs are able to survive after being sprayed onto substrates with different stiffness, especially in the presence of collagen I. This lays the foundations for advancing the effectiveness of cell therapy for lung regeneration.

Sally Kim presented recent work on 8th March 2019 at the 17th European Respiratory Society Lung Science Conference: ‘Mechanisms of Acute Exacerbation of Respiratory Disease’. 

In an oral presentation titled ‘A novel ex-vivo approach to study lung injury and repair’, Sally presented the key highlights of the precision cut lung slice model our lab uses to study lung injury and repair. Our ex-vivo model received attention as a promising tool for multiple applications in pulmonary research. Sally won a bursary to attend this conference and as a bursary recipient, she was involved in the mentorship programme in which she received valuable mentorship critical for early career researchers. She was also given the opportunity to co-chair a session. She found the conference exceptionally supportive and worthwhile for early career and junior researchers.

Live imaging of alveologenesis in precision-cut lung slices reveals dynamic epithelial cell behaviour

Researchers in the Dean lab have published exciting exciting novel insights into alveoli development. Alveoli are the site of gas exchange in the lungs. Damage to alveoli, is a component of many chronic and acute lung diseases such as emphysema and Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. In addition, insufficient generation of alveoli results in bronchopulmonary dysplasia, which affects many babies born prematurely. Visualising the process of alveolar development (alveologenesis) is important so that we can begin to explore potential ways to repair and regenerate lung tissue. Because the lungs are situated deep inside the body, it is difficult to see alveologenesis happening in the body. In this study, we have established a new method to visualise this process live, in slices of lung tissue. This is the first time that we have been able to see the process of alveologenesis in real-time.  Our study finds that during alveologenesis, a key type of cells, epithelial cells are highly mobile and we have identified how epithelial cells associate with each other to form new alveoli. We also show that by adding drugs to the slices, we can interfere with the process of alveologenesis. Our study has established a new system that enables us to conduct research on how alveoli form and to test potential treatments to repair damaged alveoli.

Tweet link :
https://twitter.com/ImperialNHLI/status/1105450997546131456

Paper link:
https://rdcu.be/bqC71

Akram, K. M., Yates, L. L., Mongey, R., Rothery, S., Gaboriau, D. C. A., Sanderson, J., Hind, M., Griffiths, M. & Dean, C. H. 2019 (published 12 March). Nature Communications 10, Article number: 1178

9th January 2019

‘How can we celebrate and support diversity in STEM – a younger perspective’.

 Introduced by Professor Sara Rankin, Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at the NHLI, this year’s lecture broke from tradition by offering a younger perspective on the representation and advancement of women in science. The three guest speakers had been recognised for their commitment to campaigning for diversity in STEM. They each give a 10-15 minute talk followed by a 15 minute Q&A panel facilitated by Dr Mike Cox, a postdoctoral research associate (PDRA) at NHLI and member of the NHLI Athena Self-Assessment Team.

Inspiring and thought-provoking talks from Dr Jess Wade, Dr Faith Uwadiae and Siena Castellon covered many vital themes promoting gender and race equality as well as advocating Neurodiversity.

See here to watch the lectures.

High-fidelity probing of the structure and heterogeneity of extracellular vesicles by resonance-enhanced atomic force microscopy infrared spectroscopy

• Sally Yunsun Kim, Dipesh Khanal, Bill Kalionis & Wojciech Chrzanowski 

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41596-018-0109-3?WT.feed_name=subjects_materials-science

A new article from previous work by Dr Sally Kim et al as been published in Nature protocols this month detailing development of an atomic force microscope IR spectroscopy approach to probing the structural composition of single extracellular vesicles with nanoscale resolution. 

The 2018 Winter Meeting was held between 5-7th December at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre, London.

Dr. Charlotte Dean gave her talk entitled “Real-time imaging reveals novel insights into alveologenesis” at the plenary scientific symposium on the 6^th December 2018. Charlotte presented recent findings which enlighten our understanding of the process of alveologenesis.

Welcome to Sally, a visiting post doctoral researcher from The University of Sydney and a recipient of a European Respiratory Society (ERS) / EMBO Long Term Research Fellowship. Sally will be exploring innovative pharmacological approaches driving tissue repair in lung diseases.