Research Supervisor Connect
Several projects are available to apply omics techniques to investigate the mechanisms and reversibility of harms caused by multiple medications (polypharmacy).
Suitable for a biomedical or clinician-scientist researcher with an interest in bioinformatics, seeking to make translational impact on improving the healthcare of older people. This is an opportunity to apply your skills to the growing fields of geriatric pharmacology and precision medicine. You will work in a transdisciplinary team of clinical and basic science researchers, focused on pharmacology/medication safety and ageing/gerontology/ geriatrics. The techniques used may include preclinical research, western blots, histology, immunohistochemistry, ELISAs, PCR’s, mass spectrometry, proteomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, multi-omics, bioinformatics and computational analysis.
North Shore - Kolling Institute of Medical Research
Older people have more diseases (e.g. dementia, heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes), use more medications and are more vulnerable to adverse events. Most older Australians take ≥5 different medications (polypharmacy) to manage multiple health problems. Polypharmacy is associated with adverse outcomes such as impairment of physical and cognitive function, increased falls, frailty, hospitalisation and mortality. Currently, deprescribing, which is the supervised withdrawal of inappropriate, harmful or unnecessary medications, is the clinical strategy to manage these harms.
These PhD projects ultimately aim to contribute towards optimising the use of medicines to improve health outcomes. They will investigate the underlying mechanisms of polypharmacy-induced harm in old age, and reversibility with deprescribing. The student will analyse (i) existing tissue banks (clinical and preclinical) and functional in vivo data, (ii) conduct multi-omics and multi-organ analyses, and (iii) apply systems biology approaches. The project has strong potential for publications, conference presentations and future clinical translation. The findings from this study will directly inform the quality use of medicines and medication safety in older adults.
Research location Laboratory of Ageing and Pharmacology, Level 13, Kolling Institute
Primary Supervisor John Mach
Auxiliary supervisor Sarah Hilmer
The opportunity ID for this research opportunity is 3555