PREGNANCY IN WOMEN WITH CHRONIC KIDNEY DISEASE OF ALL STAGES, INCLUDING WOMEN ON DIALYSIS AND WITH KIDNEY TRANSPLANTS
With
Professor Shilpanjali Jesudason
Head of Unit, Central and Northern Adelaide Renal and Transplantation Service (CNARTS),
Royal Adelaide Hospital,
Central Adelaide Local Health Network (CALHN) &
Clinical Professor, University of Adelaide, South Australia
RESEARCHER PROFILE
Filmed in Adelaide, South Australia | March 2025
Professor Shilpanjali Jesudason is an academic nephrologist and Head of Department at the Royal Adelaide Hospital’s Central Northern Adelaide Renal and Transplant Service, South Australia.
From 2017-2020, she was the Clinical Director of Kidney Health Australia, the peak body for patients with kidney disease. In this role she developed a passion for advancing kidney disease education in primary care.
She is the founder and Program Lead for Pregnancy and Kidney Research Australia, co-leads the new ISN Train the Trainer Program for Pregnancy and Kidney Disease, and is the inaugural chair of the Australian and Zealand Dialysis and Transplantation Registry (ANZDATA) Parenthood working group.
She is founding chair of the ANZ Society of Nephrology Pacific Working Group, and has been a supporter of nephrology development in her birth country of Fiji.
In 2025, she was awarded the Roscoe R. Robinson award for outstanding contributions to nephrology, by the International Society of Nephrology.
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9695-0761
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Newborn screening for congenital hypothyroidism
Assoc Prof Jack is passionate about the health and wellbeing of children and adolescents, with diverse research areas including the impacts of family friendly workplace initiatives, screening and management of thyroid disorders in infants and children. She supports her First Nations colleagues on Indigenous-led research projects funded by the Medical Research Future Fund, aiming to improve the social and emotional wellbeing of First Nations Children. Through her clinical and academic roles, Assoc Prof Jack hopes to make a positive difference to the health and well-being of children and their families.
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Food and fasting periods as medicine to prevent disease
Professor Leonie Heilbronn is based at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI), where she leads the Obesity and Metabolism laboratory. Her research is at the interface between basic and clinical science. She is internationally recognised for her work in nutritional modulation in humans and has made major contributions to our current understanding of mechanisms underlying conditions such as insulin resistance, particularly inflammation and lipid metabolism. She has also contributed significantly to current concepts of caloric restriction (CR), intermittent fasting (IF) and time restricted eating (TRE) in humans. She has published more than 110 peer reviewed papers in scientific journals and is an Associate Editor of Obesity, and Obesity Research and Clinical Practice.
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Oral administration of insulin for Type 1 Diabetes
Huiwen Pang is a 3rd year PhD candidate in the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, University of Queensland, focusing on biomedical health research. Prior to commencing his PhD, Huiwen studied animal genetics in his Masters degree at Huazhong Agriculture University in China.
People with diabetes, especially Type 1 diabetes, largely rely on the insulin injections or insulin pumps to control their high blood glucose levels, which is painful and has a high risk of infections.
Huiwen Pang is conducting research on nano-based drug formulations for Type 1 diabetes treatment, with a focus on using nanomaterials to load insulin for oral administration and employing anti-apoptotic and anti-inflammatory approaches to mitigate damage to beta cells.
