WEHI Wednesday Seminar hosted by Associate Professor Jason Tye-Din
 

Dr Melinda Hardy
Senior Research Officer – Tye-Din Laboratory, Immunology division – Infection, Inflammation & Immunity Theme, WEHI

Gluten-induced cytokine release: a tool kit for immune and clinical studies in coeliac disease

 

Davis Auditorium

Join via SLIDO enter code #WEHIWednesday

Including Q&A session
 

Coeliac disease affects 1 in 70 Australians, with the only treatment being a strict gluten-free diet. Major challenges for patients are the poor rates of diagnosis and a lifelong treatment that fails to resolve symptoms or enteropathy in a third of cases. Current diagnosis requires an invasive gastroscopy and active gluten consumption, which complicates precise diagnosis in the 15% of Australians who choose to eliminate dietary gluten prior to testing.

In order to tackle these clinical shortcomings, our research group has combined clinical and immune studies to characterise responses in patients following gluten consumption. We recently reported on a circulating cytokine cascade, primarily involving interleukin-2, induced by gluten that tracks with the frequency of pathogenic gluten-specific T cells and clinical symptoms. This cytokine response can be replicated in vitro using whole blood incubated with gluten peptides. This seminar will explore how these findings are being employed to advance immune-based diagnostics, improve gluten-free dietary guidelines, and facilitate the development of novel therapies.

Melinda is a senior research officer in the Coeliac Disease Lab working for over a decade with A/Prof Jason Tye-Din to study the disease’s immunopathogenesis. She completed her PhD at the Mater Medical Research Institute, focusing on dendritic cells in cancer immunotherapy, and later conducted a Phase I clinical trial on a peptide-pulsed dendritic cell vaccine for prostate cancer at the Mater Hospital. She is running several discovery projects and also works closely with industry collaborators to advance pre-clinical drug development.

All welcome!