INFECTIONS AND OTHER LUNG DISEASES USING MODELS OF HUMAN LUNG TISSUE GROWN FROM STEM CELLS
Dr Rhiannon Werder,
Team Leader
Murdoch Children’s Research Institute
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
RESEARCHER PROFILE
Filmed in Melbourne, Australia | February 2025
Released on the United Nations International Day of Women and Girls in Science, 11th February 2025 @WomenScienceDay
Dr Rhiannon Werder is a Team Leader at Murdoch Children’s Research Institute leading a multidisciplinary team, combining expertise in stem cell biology and immunology, to develop new therapies for lung diseases. Her research centres around induced pluripotent stem cells to investigate respiratory diseases, spanning acute respiratory infections to chronic lung diseases. Using stem cells, Dr Werder’s team creates models of human lung tissue. With these models, Dr Werder is investigating how human-specific pathogens infect different regions of the lung, the ensuing immune responses, and how the lung repairs itself after infections, especially in people with preexisting lung diseases.
After completing her PhD in Mucosal Immunology at the University of Queensland, Dr Werder was awarded a NHMRC CJ Martin Fellowship to undertake postdoctoral training at the Center for Regenerative Medicine at Boston University. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr Werder’s research led to significant findings, including the first discovery of how the lung epithelium responds to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. She has also pioneered new gene-editing techniques in iPSC-derived epithelial cells to understand chronic lung disease inception. The impact of her research has been recognised by prestigious awards including the Metcalf Prize for Stem Cell Research by National Stem Cell Foundation of Australia.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6432-4587
-
Lymphoma, Myeloma and Genomics
Professor Dipti Talaulikar is a clinical and laboratory haematologist with expertise in genomics, working at Canberra Health Services, and Professor at ANU. She has a clinical and research interest in lymphoma, myeloma and genomics, and has authored close to 100 peer reviewed papers, including several clinical guidelines that have had a significant impact on clinical practice.
-
Hormone receptor positive breast cancer and therapy resistance
Prof Elgene Lim is a medical oncologist at St Vincent’s Hospital and Head of the Connie Johnson Breast Cancer Research Lab at the Garvan Institute. Following his PhD at the Walter & Eliza Hall Institute where he identified the aberrant cells in carriers of the BRCA1 mutant gene, a hereditary breast cancer syndrome as the culprit cells giving rise to breast cancer, he furthered his research and clinical training at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. He was awarded the National Breast Cancer Foundation Practitioner Fellowship in 2014 and returned from Boston to Australia. In 2017, he was awarded the inaugural National Breast Cancer Foundation Endowed Chair, and subsequently appointed the Principal Cancer Theme Lead at UNSW.
-
Development of novel analytical and diagnostic tools using nanotechnology and microfluidics
Dr Alain Wuethrich is an NHMRC Emerging Leader fellow and ARC DECRA awardee at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology.
Hailing from Switzerland, research focuses on the development of novel analytical and diagnostic tools that harness nanotechnology and microfluidics; two rapidly growing fields with high potential to provide diagnostic solutions needed for precision medicine.
