Congratulations to Associate Professor Johanna Montgomery, Dr Justin Rustenhoven, Dr Carolyn Barrett, Dr Daniel Conole and Dr Mickey Fan on receiving fellowships.
Associate Professor Johanna Montgomery, Department of Physiology, was awarded a James Cook Research Fellowship. She will explore the underlying function of nerve cells called ‘ganglionated plexi’ clustered on the heart. These nerve cells act as ‘little brains’ controlling the rhythm of the heart. They play a key role in atrial fibrillation, a condition of the heart that causes an irregular and often rapid heart rate, and is linked to an increased risk for stroke, heart failure and dementia. Getting to the root cause of how these nerve cells control heart rhythm, and if they can alter their signals under different conditions, is vitally important. Montgomery has developed ground-breaking techniques to take measurements of the nerve signals from these neurons. These methods will be applied in this study to look for changes in the heart’s neural activity, comparing tissue from patients with atrial fibrillation to tissue from non-AF patients.
Dr Justin Rustenhoven, Department of Pharmacology was awarded a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship for research titled “Cleaning the brain drains: augmenting meningeal lymphatic dysfunction in aging and neurodegenerative disease to alleviate cognitive decline.” Justin completed his PhD in Pharmacology at the University of Auckland in 2017 and then moved to the USA to perform postdoctoral research, first at the Centre for Brain Immunology and Glia at the University of Virginia, and then at the Department of Pathology and Immunology, Washington University in St Louis. He will be returning to the School of Medical Sciences to complete his fellowship with Professor Mike Dragunow.
Dr Carolyn Barrett, Department of Physiology received a Marsden Fund award for her project entitled “Preeclampsia: Mother vs placenta”. Preeclampsia is a disease of pregnancy that affects about 3000 New Zealand women every year. The exact pathogenesis of preeclampsia remains unclear. Our current work has shown that vesicles released from the placenta can affect the reactivity of maternal blood vessels, but it is clear there are also other factors involved. We hypothesize that preeclampsia is the interaction of both placental and maternal factors: the contents of the extracellular vesicles derived from the preeclamptic placentae and pre-existing vascular dysfunction and blunted autonomic control of blood pressure in the mother. We propose to model these interactions using vesicles derived from human placentae injected into rodent models with varying degrees of cardiovascular impairment to establish the critical factors required to develop both early and late-onset preeclampsia. Our team is unique in that we have both the access and expertise to isolate placental vesicles from women with preeclampsia and the ability to chronically monitor cardiovascular control in rodent models. This project will increase our understanding of the pathogenesis of preeclampsia, and in doing so pave the way for better prediction and treatment of preeclampsia.
Dr Daniel Conole and Dr Mickey Fan were awarded the Sir Charles Hercus Fellowship. Dr Daniel Conole, Auckland Cancer Society Research Centre his project entitled “Next-generation high-throughput screening for smart drug discovery”. Dr Mickey Fan, Department of Physiology) his project entitled “Elucidating the effects of nitric oxide and argon on cerebral haemodynamics”.