Hudson Institute post-doctoral researcher Dr Shanti Gurung and her team are celebrating a double boost of funding for their endometriosis research.
Dr Gurung is a member of the Endometrial Stem Cell Biology Research group in The Ritchie Centre, specialising in endometrial mesenchymal stem cells and extracellular vesicles with a focus on Women’s Health.
“Both of these grants will greatly help in initiating our research and generating valuable preliminary data for future funding for endometriosis,” Dr Gurung said.
Endometriosis research funding
Their project titled “Harnessing the uterine fluid-derived antimicrobial peptides in the fight against endometriosis“ received $37,200 from Endometriosis Australia and Dr Gurung hopes it will be a springboard into developing new avenues to manage and treat endometriosis.
“Our work will investigate antimicrobial peptides and proteins in endometrial secretion in uterine fluid and how this may lead to uterine dysbiosis and endometriosis establishment,” she said.
Second endometriosis research funding grant
She also received a grant of $60,000 from the CASS Foundation for a project titled: “To infuse or not to infuse; Are endometrial mesenchymal stem cells a better efficacious and safer blood-compatible MSC source?”.
Human mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have anti-inflammatory, immune-suppressive, anti-fibrotic and healing properties, and these properties are utilised in a wide variety of clinical trials involving conditions such as bone and cartilage repair, cardiovascular diseases, colitis and graft-versus-host disease (GvHD).
MSCs are a rare population of cells and need to be cultured in the laboratory to generate enough cells for therapeutic application, however this unavoidable process compromises their inherent stem cell properties and enhances their expression of various pro-clotting factors.
Thanks to her work in the lab of Professor Caroline Gargett, who is world-renowned for discovering stem/progenitor cells in human endometrium, Dr Gurung and her team work with mesenchymal stem cells sourced from the human endometrium (eMSCs).
Robust and reproducible
They have developed a robust reproducible expansion method to generate a large number of homogeneous cell populations and this project will examine whether it would be more beneficial to use endometrial mesenchymal stem cells than cells derived from traditional sources.
“Both of these grants will greatly help in initiating our research and generating valuable preliminary data for future funding for endometriosis,” Dr Gurung said.
Harnessing the uterine fluid-derived antimicrobial peptides in the fight against endometriosis
Dr Shanti Gurung
This work will investigate antimicrobial peptides and proteins in endometrial secretion in uterine fluid and how this may lead to uterine dysbiosis and endometriosis establishment. This will be a springboard into developing new avenues to manage and treat endometriosis.
Are endometrial mesenchymal stem cells a better efficacious and safer blood-compatible MSC source?
Dr Shanti Gurung
Funders | Endometriosis Australia, CASS Foundation
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