Hear the 2023 CBT Industry Interns talk about their projects and experiences.
The presentations were delivered at the February CBT Lunch Club.
Keya Amarse: Cancer Care, Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital
Supervisor: Marie-Luise Wille
3D Printed Bolus – Analysis of current practice
This project is a retrospective analysis of 3D printed device (Bolus) records produced by the RBWH Cancer Care department. A Bolus is a medical device used in radiotherapy for the treatment of superficial lesions such as skin cancer. It is used to increase the dose to the skin and to overcome the skin-sparing effect.
Zhengduo Zhu: Brisbane Cardiology Clinic
Supervisor: Zhiyong Li
Nature language processing on extracting and labelling patients from clinic letters
Biomedical research and healthcare generate an immense amount of data from various sources, including scientific literature, electronic health records, clinical trial reports, and genomic data. This deluge of information poses challenges in efficiently organizing. analyzing. and extracting valuable knowledge from unstructured data. This project aims to extract the key information from clinic letters based on different requirement of specialist. Then labelling the patient with required categories.
Haveena Anbananthan: Metro North Hospital and Health Service
Supervisor: Zhiyong Li
Exploring Methods for Cerebrovascular Imaging Analysis in Clinical Practice
This project aims to evaluate the effectiveness and accuracy of existing software programs used in clinical practice for the segmentation and 3D reconstructions of patient brain aneurysms. Cerebral aneurysms pose a significant risk to patients, and accurate analysis plays a crucial role in diagnosis, treatment planning and patient outcomes. By assessing the strengths and limitations of current programs, this project seeks to enhance the quality and efficiency of aneurysm analysis, leading to improved clinical decision-making and patient care.
Anu Thomas Koikalethu: Gelomics Pty Ltd
Supervisor: Nathalie Bock
Enhancing the shelf-life of thiolated gelatin (Gel-SH) for commercial viability in 3D cell culture products
Gel-SH has shown great promise as a hydrogel biomaterial for 3D cell culture but spontaneously crosslinks in storage, limiting its shelf-life and commercial potential for use in 3D cell culture kits. The project was focused on optimising the storage conditions to support Gelomics in overcoming these barriers to successful commercialisation. GelSH was subjected to different storage conditions for certain periods of time and the properties of the material were characterised across these timepoints.
Hiba al Lawati: Gelomics Pty Ltd
Supervisor: Nathan Subramaniam
Development of a novel scaffold for 3D culture of liver cells
Liver disease is one of the key challenges in global health as it causes significant morbidity and is an economic burden due to the absence of proper treatment or diagnosis. Liver biopsy is the gold standard method for the evaluation of fibrosis. However, this method is invasive, painful and can cause serious complications. New anti-fibrotic compounds to be used in diagnosis and treatment can be identified by identifying and targeting potential genes associated with liver fibrosis. In this PhD project we aim to identify novel genes that might be involved in the development of liver fibrosis and to characterize them further in 2D and 3D cell culture.
Lucy May-Young: Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital (RBWH), Metro North
Supervisor: Yi-Chin Toh
Isolation and optimisation of a protocol to isolate nasal epithelial cells from patient biopsies with or without nasal polyps
The goal of this project is to establish and optimise a protocol to isolate nasal cells from patients with chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS). CRS is an inflammatory disease of the paranasal sinuses that lasts >12 weeks and can be further classified into disease with and without nasal polyps. In this study, samples will be collected from two patient cohorts: those with nasal polyps and those without nasal polyps. These two phenotypes of CRS dictate severity of disease and links to the involvement of specific immune cell subtypes has been recorded. Once the cells from tissue biopsies have been isolated, a cell bank will be created for future in vitro work to investigate the different characteristics of nasal cells from the two cohorts.