Congratulations, Laura, Joanne and Alistair.
Professor Laura Bennet, Dr Joanne Davidson and Professor Alistair Gunn, Department of Physiology won the 2021 University of Auckland Research Excellence team medal for their exceptional research programme on ways to prevent or alleviate perinatal brain damage.
Brain injury around the time of birth leads to devastating, life-long disability, affecting the person, their Whānau and society as a whole. They are systematically using a multi-staged approach to understand fetal adaptation to labour, to improve detection of at risk fetuses whose ability to adapt is failing, to dissect the mechanisms evolving perinatal brain injury and develop new therapeutic targets. In particular, they have refined their understanding of protocols for therapeutic hypothermia and developed strong preclinical protocols for other therapies for infants who are not able to benefit from hypothermia, such as recombinant erythropoietin, human amnion epithelial cells, and connexin hemichannel blockade.