Immune cells have evolved clever mechanisms to dynamically reprogram their cellular metabolism to accommodate altered functional outputs. The immune system has also evolved similarly resourceful circadian mechanisms to anticipate microbial threats, and synchronise elevated immune responses with periods of activity when the threat of infection is greatest.

Respiratory diseases are major clinical issues. Ten-12% of Australians have asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the third commonest cause of death in the world. There are no effective treatments for severe asthma or COPD.

Glioblastoma is the most aggressive primary brain tumour with median patient survival of 15 months. Given the extensive intratumoural molecular heterogeneity of glioblastomas and the lack of molecularly-targeted drugs that can permeate the blood-brain barrier, glioblastoma remains a major unmet medical need.

Protein disulfide isomerase (PDI) is an essential component of in vivo clot formation. Using a high throughput screen, we identified rutin and isoquercetin as inhibitors of PDI.

Prof Andrew McKenzie will present our recent development of multi-transcription factor, to enable the delineation of precursor states, and also show how the stromal niche can help maintain the microenvironment in adipose tissue.

We have shown in lean mice that hepatocytes contribute substantially to basal plasma tPA and fibrinolysis and that hepatocyte tPA expression is repressed by DACH1. Moreover, liver DACH1 correlates with body mass index in humans and body weight in mice, suggesting a possible mechanism that limits tPA in obesity.

My work dissects the specific roles of macrophages in these regulatory processes, how their function is specifically tailored to their tissue of residence, and how macrophage function is regulated by the microbiota.

Barrier surfaces such as the lung and intestine contain a huge number of immune cells that are poised to attack harmful micro-organisms, but must be tightly regulated to ignore innocuous environmental substances and commensal micro-organisms.