Dr Claudia Nold - AWRS grant recipient

The Ritchie Centre is delighted to announce that Dr Claudia Nold was also awarded a Monash University Advancing Women's Research Success grant.
Only 22 awards were made University wide and TRC was awarded two.
This is an extraordinary achievement and highlights the exceptionally high standard of researcher we have here at the centre; many of whom are balancing family commitments with their successful research careers.

Congratulations to Claudia and Hayley on these awards and keep up the great work.


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Order of Australia - Prof. Euan Wallace

We are delighted to advise that our very own Prof. Euan Wallace has been awarded a prestigious Order of Australia in the Queen's Birthday Honours list.

 The Citation reads as follows:

MEMBER (AM) IN THE GENERAL DIVISION OF THE ORDER OF AUSTRALIA

Professor Euan Morrison WALLACE, Sandringham Vic 3191

For significant service to medicine, particularly in the areas of obstetrics and gynaecology.

The Order of Australia is an "order of chivalry" bestowed by Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia, to recognise Australian citizens for achievement or meritous service.

In the Australian honours system, appointments to the Order of Australia confer recognition for outstanding achievement and service.

The Ritchie Centre offers its sincere congratulations to Euan, and his family, on receipt of this most deserving and appropriate honour.

Ritchie Centre Scientists Awarded $2M from NIH for baby research

We are delighted to announce that Ritchie Centre senior scientists Professor Stuart Hooper and Dr Graeme Polglase and their team have been awarded a highly prestigious National Institutes for Health (NIH) grant for their research into how a fetus transitions into a baby at the time birth.  

Everyone of us has done it - changed from a fetus to a newborn baby - and yet, amazingly, our understanding of how each of us navigate this "transition" remains limited.

This world leading research, led by Stuart and Graeme, using state-of-the-art imaging afforded by the Synchrotron, seeks to answer the most fundamental unknowns about this critical journey that each of us make.  Why is this work so important?

Most babies "transition" with remarkable ease but many, particularly those born very premature, do not and need help to survive.  Unfortunately, this "help" often causes harm, harm that can lead to life-long disability, including brain injury resulting in cerebral palsy.

Stuart and his team know that if we better understand the physiology of transition it will be possible to improve how we resuscitate these most fragile of babies at their most vulnerable time.

This work, funded by the US NIH, is set to change the care of newborn babies in Birth Suites worldwide.

Well done team. We are very proud of your work and countless babies will be all the better for it.

#onlyacurewilldo #savingbabieslives #ausynch

Euan Wallace
Director

Charles Roehr - preterm babies breathing

Thanks to dedicated research, Medical Science is rapidly improving. In particular, the sciences concerned with the management of babies which are born way too early, that is before their due date, which is usually around 40 weeks of pregnancy, is a fast evolving and most challenging field. Today, babies born as early as 16 weeks before their due date have a good chance of survival. Such infants will need intensive care treatment at the start of life, in order to survive. But survival can be associated with significant side effects, such as long standing problems with breathing through early childhood. Therefore, much research effort goes into finding the best possible way to help preterm infants survive without longstanding illness. One way of doing so is to find the most effective way on how to help preterm babies breathe. The aim is to the help babies get air into their lungs and breathe. This is usually done by placing a breathing tube down the babies windpipe. Doctors try to do this without hurting the child or letting the lungs suffer from the process. Once the tube is in place, doctors can assist the baby with its breathing. To do this gently, knowledge of the applied breathing volumes is necessary. Specially designed instruments can give breath by breath feed back on the volume of air going in and out of the lung. Also, the concentration of oxygen can be tailored according to the child’s requirements. The paper presented here investigated a different breathing gas than oxygen, it investigates carbondioxyde (CO2), which is present during normal gas exchange. Several studies have shown that knowledge of the concentration in the breathing gas coming from the baby may have value for the treatment of infants requiring help with breathing. We looked at how reliable the concentration of CO2 can be detected when there is a breathing tube in place. In our laboratory experiment, using a dummy, a breathing simulator and some breathing tubes, we found that the concentration of CO2 in the breathing gas can not be reliably measured in the presence of increasing leak around the breathing tube. This research will help doctors interpret the breathing gas concentrations of CO2 in the future and hopefully help gain more important information on how to best support the breathing of very prematurely born infants.


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Stem Cells and Cerebral Palsy

Centre Director, Euan Wallace, participated in a Public Forum on stem cells and cerebral palsy last night in Sydney at the Cerebral Palsy Alliance HQ in Allambie Heights, NSW.

The CP Alliance, https://www.cerebralpalsy.org.au, ran a fantastic event at the fabulous CP HQ. A webcast of the event is accessible via the CP Alliance website.

The forum discussed the prospects of using stem cells as a therapy for CP including establishing a national clinical trial in Australia.

Stay tuned for advances in this field. The Centre's Professor Michael Fahey and Euan Wallace are leading this initiative in collaboration with colleagues nationally.

Dummies may reduce the risk of Cot Death

Research presented by the Centre's Rosemary Horne at the annual Pediatric Academic Societies' meeting in the US this week shows how and why giving your baby a dummy (soother) reduces their risk of Sudden Infant Death.

The work is featured by the ABC Science today:
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/05/06/3751068.htm

Rosemary and her team in the Infant and Child Health Theme at The Ritchie Centre  have provided world-first insight into what happens when a baby sucks on a dummy. They have shown that sucking increases a newborn baby's heart rate function, improving how the heart rate responds the blood pressure. This effect is seen in the babies who were given a dummy even when they weren't using the dummy.

How is this related to Cot Death (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome)?

Rosemary's team have previously shown that babies at high risk of SIDS are much less able to make adjustments in their heart rate and blood pressure and less able to arouse from sleep when blood pressure falls. This new work shows that babies who are given a dummy have much more responsive heart rates and so more able to compensate for changes in blood pressure. This suggests that they will be at much lower risk of SIDS.

The excitement in this work is that it provides an understanding of why using a dummy may reduce SIDS. It gives new parents the science they so badly need to help them best look after their precious newborn baby.

As always, there is more to do and much more to learn but at least Rosemary and her team have provided one more piece of the jigsaw.

Looking forward to the end of SIDS. Well done Team.

PhD student International Success

Ms Stacey Ellery is at it again, this time receiving a prestigious travel award from the International Paediatric Research Foundation and the journal, Pediatric Research. Stacey was selected as a winner of the "Best Paper Travel Award" for junior authors based on her recent publication in Pediatric Research.
Read her award winning manuscript here.

Congratulations Stacey, keep up the good work.