The combined skills of Professors and are bringing new treatments for preterm babies, from laboratory discovery to clinical trials in Monash Children’s Hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).
In business it’s called vertical integration – when the same organisation controls multiple stages of the production process.The medical research equivalent of vertical integration is rare – which is why Hudson Institute is fortunate to have husband and-wife team Professors and , who are engaged in a hugely beneficial working partnership.
Controlling inflammation in preterm babies
With a background in pharmacology, Claudia spends her time searching for new ways to safeguard the health of tiny infants – aiming to prevent bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD), necrotising enterocolitis, and other illnesses, as well as collaborating on prevention of cerebral palsy. She jointly heads the Interventional Immunology in Early Life Diseases Research group.
Meanwhile Marcel, a clinician-scientist, splits his time between the lab and Monash Children’s Hospital, where he’s hands-on with babies like Max (see story below) and their families during their early difficult days.
These pioneering collaborators are now close to achieving something once thought impossible. Based on decades of work, they are within reach of a treatment to control inflammation in preterm babies that can cause devastating heart, lung, gut and brain conditions.
Preterm inflammatory response identified
In 2022, they identified the specific inflammatory responses that drive illnesses of prematurity and revealed several risk factors both before and after birth.
Marcel explains their discovery, published in Science Translational Medicine: “Type-2- polarised inflammation drives cardiopulmonary disease in these babies, allowing us to now work on ways to control inflammation in preterm babies and avoid the damage it wreaks.”
“It’s one of those ‘eureka’ moments,” says Claudia. “Like when we discovered the anti-inflammatory function of one of the molecules we were investigating, which we now are developing into a drug.”
They also further advanced their clinical trial of the anti-inflammatory drug anakinra, and they are cautiously positive about the results.
