RESEARCHER PROFILE (Filmed November 2023)
Dr Felicity Han, Research Fellow
Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology
University of Queensland, Australia
Applying nanotechnology to chronic pain management
Dr Felicity Han is a Research Fellow and Leader in Pain Relief Innovation, at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology in the University of Queensland. Dr Han’s research interests sit at the interface of drug delivery and the pain field. Her overarching research goal is to improve the quality of day to day life of patients suffering from chronic pain, by applying nanotechnology to the development of novel highly effective pain-killer products for improving chronic pain management.
Dr Han’s team have developed five different techniques to produce painkiller-loaded nanoparticles and nanofibers aimed at improving pain relief for patients where available pain-killers either lack efficacy or produce dose-limiting side-effects. With the use of their nanoparticles, Dr Han’s team aim to turn a small but potent peptide that has been on the market for over a decade into an oral treatment for improving pain management that currently lacks efficacy in patients. T
Dr Han’s research focuses on developing drug-products to solve one of the largest unmet medical needs in the pain field through the use of sustainable materials. Her team are currently working on developing multifunctional sutures including biodegradable pain relief sutures and innovative novel nanoparticles, which deliver innate-immune targeting peptides for the treatment of cancer and cancer-related pain. Their research also investigates the role of C5a and C3a in the pathogenesis of chronic pain including neuropathic pain, cancer-related pain, low back pain, and OA pain.
Dr Han works in collaboration with other leading Australian and international researchers to stay at the forefront of the drug delivery systems field and the pain field. They also provide a preclinical evaluation of novel compounds and formulations.
Dr Han enjoy’s volunteering within the academic community, most notably as Head of the SBMS ECR Committee and Treasurer for The Queensland Chinese Association of Scientists and Engineers (QCASE). Currently, she is serving as a guest editor of Pain Research and Management.
-
Cellular interactions responsible for development, maintenance, and strength of the skeleton
Professor Sims directs the Bone Cell Biology and Disease Unit at St. Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research and is a Professorial Fellow at The University of Melbourne and Australian Catholic University.
She leads a team who studies the cellular interactions responsible for development, maintenance, and strength of the skeleton. She completed her PhD at the University of Adelaide, followed by postdoctoral work at the Garvan Institute in Sydney then at Yale School of Medicine, in New Haven, Connecticut, where she studied the role of the estrogen receptor in regulating bone structure.
-
Integrated Oral Health Care
Dr Ajesh George is a Professor of Interprofessional Oral Health in the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Western Sydney University (WSU) and Honorary Professor in the School of Dentistry at The University of Sydney. He is a dentist with extensive experience in integrated oral health care and is a renowned expert globally in providing oral health training to non-dental professionals and translating oral health guidelines into their practice. Dr George is also the Director and Co-founder of the “Australian Centre for Integration of Oral Health” (ACIOH) which is a leading national research centre led by WSU in collaboration with various partners including universities, health services and professional organisations.
-
Inner ear organoids for the study of human hearing and balance
Dr Jackie Ogier is an auditory neuroscientist, with a research focus on the molecular biology of hair cells, the specialised sensory receptors in the ear that detect sound and balance. She is a postdoctoral research fellow in the laboratory of A/Prof Bryony Nayagam, supported by a prestigious Passe and Williams foundation fellowship.
Dr Ogier’s experience broadly spans the genetics of hearing loss, disease modelling, micro dissection, primary cell culture, stem cell culture, organoids, and proteomics. Overall, she aims to generate knowledge of hearing and vestibular sensory biology.
