Biography

Dr Lisa Paxton is a nephrologist and PhD candidate at the Monash University, Centre for Inflammatory Diseases. She completed her Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery with Honours at Monash University in 2016, followed by internship and basic physician training at The Royal Melbourne Hospital. She subsequently undertook advanced training in Nephrology across Eastern Health, The Royal Melbourne Hospital and Bendigo Health, before completing an Amyloidosis Fellowship at Eastern Health in 2024.

Dr Paxton has a strong interest in immunology, with a particular focus on autoimmune kidney disease. She is driven by a passion for understanding fundamental disease mechanisms and translating these insights into novel therapeutic strategies. She is currently undertaking a PhD at Monash University, investigating the use of gene therapy to target neutrophil extracellular traps in autoimmune kidney disease, with the aim of contributing to more precise and effective treatments for patients.

Short project description

ANCA-Vasculitis and C3 Glomerulopathy (C3G) are kidney diseases caused by immune system dysfunction, leading to kidney damage. Current treatments use broad immune suppression, which has serious side effects and limited success. Neutrophil extracellular traps, a process by which neutrophils extrude their intracellular material to cause damage, are implicated in the disease process for both ANCA vasculitis and C3G DNase I is a critical enzyme for degrading the contents released by the neutrophils. Administration of exogenous DNase I can therapeutically treat ANCA associated vasculitis in animal models- however it has a short half life and requires twice daily treatment intravenously a cumbersome form of treatment for patients. A new gene therapy to deliver the genetic material for endogenous DNaseI production will overcome this short half life and is predicted to reduce kidney damage by breaking down harmful inflammatory cells, offering targeted treatment while preserving host defence.

Biography

Dr Julie McDonald is Australia’s first dual-trained Respiratory and Palliative Care Physician and a clinician–researcher at St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne and the University of Melbourne. Her PhD focuses on the need, role and efficacy of palliative care in systemic sclerosis (SSc), a progressive multi-organ disease with high symptom burden. She has led a world-first, early integrated SSc Palliative Care Clinic, published foundational work demonstrating that most people with SSc have unmet palliative care needs, and co-designed a patient-partnered research agenda with national consumer groups. Dr McDonald previously established an integrated Respiratory Palliative Care Service at SVHM and completed a clinico research fellowship in Toronto on early palliative care in oncology. Through these initiatives, she has secured competitive clinical and research funding and built scalable, evidence-informed models of integrated palliative care that improve patient-centred outcomes.

Short project description

Systemic sclerosis (SSc), or scleroderma, is a rare, life-limiting disease affecting multiple organs including the lungs and heart. From early on, many people experience severe symptoms, greatly reducing quality of life for them and their families. Despite this, the role of palliative care — which can relieve symptoms and improve wellbeing — has never been studied in SSc.

My research explores what role palliative care could have to improve outcomes for people with SSc. At St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne, I have co-designed and delivered the world’s first SSc Palliative Care Clinic. We provide holistic care, including symptom control, psychological support and future care planning, alongside standard rheumatology treatment. My PhD will evaluate this clinic, define what people with SSc and their caregivers need to live well with serious illness, and examine their needs at the end-of-life. This work will build future SSc care models which include palliative care's role.

Short project description

This project aims to enhance understanding of how inflammation contributes to atherosclerosis and how treatments can target inflammatory pathways to reduce cardiovascular risk. We will investigate the link between inflammatory biomarkers and cardiovascular events in both primary and secondary prevention settings. Furthermore, we will assess the clinical utility of such biomarkers to personalise anti-atherosclerotic treatment decisions by applying modern statistical methods to decern the overall benefit of this tailored approach to risk stratification. Additionally, we will evaluate the effects of colchicine, an affordable and safe anti-inflammatory drug, on vascular inflammation in patients post myocardial infarction. This will be achieved by measuring the direct effect of colchicine on arterial inflammation detected with advanced multi-modality imaging. This project will refine cardiovascular disease prevention strategies by incorporating inflammatory biomarkers into risk assessment and predicting response to anti-inflammatory therapies, thereby providing more personalised treatment for those at risk of cardiovascular disease.

Biography

Ben Cailes is a Cardiologist and reseracher working at the Austin Hospital and the University of Melbourne. He has previously received the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) Young Investigator Award in 2024 as well as the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) Trainee Research Award for Excellence in 2019. He was also runner-up in the CSANZ Ralph Reader Prize in 2024 as well as the CSANZ Imaging Prize and the American Heart Association (AHA) Melvin Judkin’s Prize Early Career Clinical Investigator Award in 2023. Ben’s PhD is exploring cirrhotic cardiomyopathy in patients with end-stage liver failure, with a focus on improving the diagnostic criteria for this poorly-defined condition and assessing novel non-invasive investigations that can be used to minimise cardiac perioperative risk in this vulnerable patient group.

Short project description

This project aims to improve our understanding of heart disease in people with advanced liver cirrhosis, a condition that causes scarring and inflammation of the liver. Heart disease is the leading cause of disability and death in these patients. By using big data from the Victorian Liver Transplant Unit, this project will track the health of individuals with end stage liver failure as they undergo transplantation and will examine their rates of heart disease and the effects on survival. Key objectives include measuring the frequency of heart disease and assessing the impact of this on hospital stays and mortality following transplantation. The goal is to improve our ability to detect and treat heart disease in these at-risk patients, enhancing their quality of life and survival, as well as providing a significant community benefit by ensuring we maximise the medical wellbeing that we are able to deliver from each donated liver.

Biography

I am a paediatrician specialised in inherited metabolic disorders. I started my specialist training in NZ before undertaking clinical fellowships in London at Great Ormond Street and Evelina hospitals, and returned to NZ to start my role as a consultant with the National Metabolic Service in 2024. Our team sees children and adults throughout Aotearoa with these rare disorders, which are often picked up on the newborn screening blood test. However many disorders are not included, such as short-chain enoyl-CoA hydratase deficiency (SCEH deficiency) which is the focus of my doctoral studies at the Liggins Institute, University of Auckland. This disorder is more common in Aotearoa, and improving outcomes for affected people will be the priority of my research career.

Short project description

Short-chain enoyl-CoA hydratase (SCEH) deficiency is a recently discovered inherited metabolic disorder that causes potentially fatal neurological disease presenting in early childhood. It is globally rare but is more common in Māori and Pacific people due to a common genetic variant in these populations. It is potentially treatable with a specialised diet, including restriction of the amino acid valine, and an emergency feed plan during illnesses. However children have usually suffered severe neurological injury by the time they are diagnosed. This might be prevented or ameliorated if treatment can be started prior to the onset of symptoms. However, unless an affected family member has already been diagnosed, early detection by newborn screening (NBS) would be required to enable pre-symptomatic treatment.

All babies in Australasia undergo NBS with collection of drops of blood onto a filter-paper card at 1-3 days of age, which is sent to the screening laboratory, where they are tested for a range of rare congenital disorders. However a suitable screening test for SCEH deficiency is not currently available.

In this project, we will further evaluate the response to early and pre-symptomatic treatment in the known SCEH deficiency patients in Aotearoa. We will then collect blood samples from these patients to develop a screening test. This will include measurement of abnormal metabolites, the activity of the SCEH enzyme, and testing for the common mutation in the ECHS1 gene. This project therefore has the potential to prevent brain injury in affected Māori and Pacific children.