Sara JoseSara Jose

Title: Validating the role of Bruton’s Tyrosine Kinase (BTK) in Motor Neuron Disease

Overview: Chronic immune activation and ongoing inflammation are key drivers of disease progression in MND. This inflammation starts at the earliest disease stages and is evident throughout the disease course. Therefore, blocking this inflammation cycle is an attractive therapeutic approach to slow or halt disease progression. This project will study a new pathway we have discovered to be important in driving chronic inflammation. It will also evaluate if an FDA-approved drug that targets this pathway could be used to treat MND.

Bio: Sara Jose is a final-year PhD student from Gordon group, UQCCR. She is a post-graduate (M. Tech) in Biotechnology from Mumbai, India. Following her studies, she fulfilled various roles in a leading pharmaceutical company in India, Piramal Lifesciences and Translational research Institute (TRI), Australia. Sara is currently working on novel disease-modifying therapeutic targets in neuroinflammation and progressive neurodegeneration in Parkinson’s disease (PD) and Motor neuron disease (MND). 

Peter SimpsonAssociate Professor Peter Simpson

Title: The Brisbane Breast Bank – a platform for breast cancer research

Overview: The Brisbane Breast Bank was established in 2005 as a bioresource of clinical specimens and data to facilitate breast cancer research. This presentation will describe the bank and some current and future research programs that associated with this collection.

Bio: A/Prof Peter Simpson holds a joint teaching and research position at UQ, teaching Pathology to year 1 and 2 medical students enrolled on the Faculty of Medicine MD Program and is a Research Group Leader at the UQCCR. He is a Fellow of the Faculty of Science in the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia, and he is a member of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (Breast Cancer group). He has 20 years experience undertaking molecular pathology research to better understand the development and progression of breast cancer.

About UQ Centre for Clinical Research Seminars

The UQ Centre of Clinical Research (CCR) Seminars are held fortnightly on Wednesdays from 12pm - 1pm (except during school holidays) in the CCR Auditorium, Herston. The series features topics in the  field of research, presented by invited international, interstate and local researchers.

Venue

Via Zoom: https://uqz.zoom.us/j/87198801358