NEONATAL RESPIRATORY TRIALS IN SICK & PRETERM NEWBORN INFANTS
Professor Brett J. Manley, Consultant Neonatologist
Mercy Hospital For Women, Melbourne & Professor of Neonatal Medicine, Department of Obstetrics, Gynaecology and Newborn Health, University of Melbourne, Australia
RESEARCHER PROFILE
Filmed in Melbourne, Australia | August 2025
Professor Brett J. Manley is a Consultant Neonatologist at the Mercy Hospital for Women in Melbourne, Australia, and a Professor of Neonatology in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynaecology and Newborn Health at The University of Melbourne. His research is supported by a fellowship from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), Australia.
He divides his work time between being a clinician in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), and a clinical researcher. He is passionate about caring for sick and preterm newborn infants and contributing to the evidence base for their care, to improve their shorter- and longer-term outcomes.
Prof Manley leads and collaborates on large national and international randomised clinical trials in neonatology. He previously collaborated on 4 randomised trials of nasal high-flow as non-invasive respiratory support for preterm and term infants, all of which were published in N Engl J Med. Recently he led the PLUSS trial of intratracheal budesonide for extremely preterm infants, that recruited in 21 NICUs across 4 countries, the results of which were published in JAMA. PLUSS was awarded the Australian Clinical Trials Alliance Trial of the Year in 2025. Another passion of his is mentoring and supervising early career researchers to undertake their own clinical trials.
Source: Supplied
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0212-7956
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Visceral pain and the gut-brain axis
Professor Stuart Brierley is Director of the Visceral Pain Research Group, Director of the Hopwood Centre for Neurobiology, and Theme co-Leader of Lifelong Health at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI).
Prof Brierley is an international expert on the ‘gut-brain axis’ and chronic visceral pain mechanisms. Current investigations are on a individual cell type called the enterochromaffin cell, and it helps signal pain and anxiety from the gastrointestinal tract to the brain.
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World-first clinical trial improves patient outcomes for kidney transplants (2023)
A world-first clinical trial conducted at the Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH) and at hospitals across Australia and New Zealand has identified the best fluid treatment to reduce the risk of patients requiring dialysis after a kidney transplant.
Around one in three people who receive a kidney transplant suffer delayed graft function, which means the transplant doesn’t work immediately and they require dialysis.
The lead-author of the study, was Royal Adelaide Hospital Nephrologist and University of Adelaide researcher, Dr Michael Collins.
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Novel silk-based biomaterials for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine
Dr Jelena Rnjak-Kovacina is a Scientia Associate Professor and ARC Future Fellow leading a multidisciplinary group at the Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering, UNSW Sydney in Australia.
Her research interests are at the interface of biology and engineering, focusing on the development of biomimetic materials that direct cellular interactions for enhanced vascularisation and for the treatment of cardiovascular disease. In particular, she develops novel silk-based biomaterials and investigates how biomaterial properties translate to biological outcomes.
