NEONATAL RESPIRATORY TRIALS IN SICK & PRETERM NEWBORN INFANTS
Professor Brett J. Manley, Consultant Neonatologist
Mercy Hospital For Women, Melbourne & Professor of Neonatal Medicine, Department of Obstetrics, Gynaecology and Newborn Health, University of Melbourne, Australia
RESEARCHER PROFILE
Filmed in Melbourne, Australia | August 2025
Professor Brett J. Manley is a Consultant Neonatologist at the Mercy Hospital for Women in Melbourne, Australia, and a Professor of Neonatology in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynaecology and Newborn Health at The University of Melbourne. His research is supported by a fellowship from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), Australia.
He divides his work time between being a clinician in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), and a clinical researcher. He is passionate about caring for sick and preterm newborn infants and contributing to the evidence base for their care, to improve their shorter- and longer-term outcomes.
Prof Manley leads and collaborates on large national and international randomised clinical trials in neonatology. He previously collaborated on 4 randomised trials of nasal high-flow as non-invasive respiratory support for preterm and term infants, all of which were published in N Engl J Med. Recently he led the PLUSS trial of intratracheal budesonide for extremely preterm infants, that recruited in 21 NICUs across 4 countries, the results of which were published in JAMA. PLUSS was awarded the Australian Clinical Trials Alliance Trial of the Year in 2025. Another passion of his is mentoring and supervising early career researchers to undertake their own clinical trials.
Source: Supplied
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0212-7956
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Understanding the experience of pain for novel brain-based treatments
Associate Professor Tasha Stanton leads the Persistent Pain Research Group at SAHMRI. She is also co-Director of IIMPACT in Health at the University of South Australia, Adelaide. She is a clinical pain neuroscientist, with original training as a physiotherapist, and her research focusses on pain – why do we have it and why doesn’t it go away?
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Environmental exposure to function of lung epithelial stem cell biology
Dr Clare Weeden has recently commenced as a Laboratory Head at WEHI in 2025, supported by the CSL Centenary Fellowship.
Dr Weeden specialises in lung epithelial cell biology in the context of homeostasis, inflammation, and lung cancer, particularly in people who don’t smoke. Her work endeavours to understand how past environmental exposures shape the responses of lung cells and the molecular mechanisms underlying this cellular recall, with the aim to develop novel early detection strategies for lung disease.
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Genetic disease research imitating function and architecture of organs
Professor Wolvetang was among the first to bring the first human embryonic stem cells to Queensland, with his Wolvetang Group at the AIBN now renowned for its work with organoids: growing them, studying them, and using them to try and understand diseases and human development.
Using cutting edge technology, Professor Wolvetang designs and grows organoids both for their own work and for labs across the country, coaxing pluripotent stem cells or tissue samples into 3D structures that mimic the function and architecture of real brains, livers, kidneys, spinal cords, and intestines.
