Research Projects

There is an urgent need for treatments of sepsis, which is a dysregulated immune response to infection causing one in five deaths globally. Alhough this burden is highest in low-income countries, over 10% of Australian Intensive Care Unit (ICU) admissions are due to sepsis, with ~25% of these patients dying in hospital. Currently, there are no therapies to reverse sepsis-induced organ failure. Phase 1 clinical trials are now testing the use of mega dose sodium ascorbate (a formulation of Vitamin C) to treat sepsis. This project will use blood samples from Phase 1 human clinical trials and blood and tissue samples from large animal studies of sepsis. We will perform detailed immune phenotype analysis and functional cellular assays using flow cytometry as our main research tool to investigate how the immune signature of sepsis changes over time in ICU and with treatment. This will help us understand the immunological signature of sepsis and identify patients most likely to benefit from treatment.

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