QUT offers a diverse range of student topics for Honours, Masters and PhD study. Search to find a topic that interests you or propose your own research topic to a prospective QUT supervisor. You may also ask a prospective supervisor to help you identify or refine a research topic.
Found 98 matching student topics
Displaying 37–48 of 98 results
Activity and potential of cannabidiol and related compounds for the treatment of neuroinflammation
Epilepsy is neurological disorder estimated to affect over 50 million people worldwide. Only 20–30% of epilepsy cases have a suspected cause. The remaining cases of epilepsies arise in the absence of obvious neurological deficits, intellectual disability, or brain injuries. Neuroinflammation has shown to be linked to neurological diseases such as epilepsy. Neuroinflammation is a normal response that helps to maintain equilibrium. When the inflammation continues for an extended period of time or is overactive it can cause cellular abnormalities seen …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
Early prevention of inflammation-related diseases: characterization and use of milk and infant formula
Our belief in the importance of the 'first thousand days' and the critical part that nutrition plays has led my group to studies evaluating the composition and actions of milk and infant formula.Our studies of exosomes in biological fluids have led us to consider their presence and potential roles in milk and thus nutrition. To date, we have mainly determined proteomic contents (cargo) of exosomes but have been increasingly swayed by the literature suggesting important roles for microRNAs in general …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
Novel therapeutic strategies to treat advanced colorectal cancer
Colorectal cancer is a very common disease, with over 15,000 new cases diagnosed in Australia annually. Metastatic colorectal cancer describes advanced disease that has spread beyond the primary site. This is very aggressive and incurable in the vast majority of these patients. To improve outcomes for colorectal cancer, we are using cutting edge genomic and cell biology techniques to understand disease heterogeneity and optimise drug response. We are developing novel therapeutic interventions based on unique molecular signatures and are testing …
- Study level
- Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
Identifying individuals at high risk of Alzheimer’s disease
Dementia is the greatest cause of disability in Australians over the age of 65 years. In the absence of a significant medical breakthrough, more than $6.4 million Australians will be diagnosed with dementia in the next 40 years. The most common form of dementia is Alzheimer’s disease (AD), accounting for 60-80% of cases. The pathogenic process of AD begins decades prior to the clinical onset, so it is likely that treatments need to begin early in the disease process to …
- Study level
- Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
Therapeutic opportunities targeting epigenetic-metabolism crosswalks in cancer
Epigenetic and metabolic pathways in cancer cells are highly interconnected. Epigenetic landscape in cancer cells is modified by oncogene-driven metabolic changes. Metabolites modulate the activities of epigenetic modifying enzymes to regulate the expression of specific genes. Conversely, epigenetic deregulation that occurs in cancer affect the expression of metabolic genes, thereby altering the metabolome. These changes all coordinately enhance cancer cell proliferation, metastasis and therapy resistance.The overall aim of the project is to understand the link between the activity of epigenetic …
- Study level
- Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
Epigenetic regulation of non-coding RNAs in hypoxic tumours
In solid tumours, hypoxia occurs as a result of limitation on oxygen diffusion in avascular primary tumours or their metastases. Persistent hypoxia, significantly reduces the efficacy of radiation and chemotherapy and lead to poor outcomes. This is mainly due to increase in pro-survival genes that suppress apoptosis, enhance tumour angiogenesis, the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, invasiveness and metastasis. Much of tumour hypoxia research has been centred on examining the transcriptional targets of hypoxia inducible factors (HIFs).HypothesisEpigenetic changes mediate the effect of hypoxia …
- Study level
- Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
Investigating immunosuppression downstream of activated FGFR2 in endometrial cancer
FGFR2 encodes two alternatively spliced isoforms that differ in their ligand binding domain and the combination of tissue specific expression of these isoforms and tissue specific expression of the FGF ligands is the foundation of normal paracrine signalling. Isoform switching from FGFR2b (inclusion of exon 8) to FGFR2c (inclusion of exon 9) occurs in tumorigenesis as it establishes an autocrine loop in epithelial cancer cells. Our lab has reported that FGFR2 activation by mutations or isoform switching is associated with …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
Strain-level characterisation and visualisation of microbial communities associated with inflammatory bowel disease
Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic, relapsing inflammatory disorder driven by complex interactions between environmental, microbial and immune-mediated factors. An unfavourable shift in gut microbiome composition, known as dysbiosis, is now considered a key feature of IBD, however it is unclear how specific microorganisms and their interactions with host cells contribute to disease onset and progression. Previous IBD studies have been largely limited to older sequencing methods with low resolution. Furthermore, these studies have predominantly focused on bacterial populations, …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
- Research centre(s)
-
Centre for Microbiome Research
A novel diagnostic test for lung transplant rejection – circulating cell-free methylated DNA
Lung transplantation is a complex medical procedure for those with advanced lung disease. Average survival following lung transplantation is shorter than for any other solid organ. The median survival time of a lung transplant recipient is only 8 years due to a high incidence (over 75% at 10 years) of chronic rejection (also called chronic lung allograft dysfunction – CLAD). The clinical course of CLAD is progressive with irreversible lung injury that ultimately leads to lung failure. The median survival …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Genomics and Personalised Health
PSA splice variant in prostate cancer diagnosis and pathogenesis
Current clinical prostate cancer screening is heavily reliant on measuring serum prostate specific antigen (PSA) levels. However, two-thirds of these men will not have cancer on biopsy and conversely, other prostate diseases. As a result, for ~75% of patients the large number of indolent tumours diagnosed has led to significant overtreatment creating an urgent need for appropriate prognostic assays that can distinguish indolent, slow growing tumours from the more aggressive and lethal phenotypes. PSA/KLK3 is a member of the tissue-kallikrein …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
Immunotherapy for autoimmune disease using T cell receptor-modified T-regulatory cells
Autoimmune diseases affect approximately 5% of Australians. Well known examples include type I diabetes, multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis. These diseases have unpleasant, and sometimes tragic, consequences for the affected person and are a costly burden on our health system. As treatment is often limited to managing symptoms, new therapies for autoimmune diseases are much desired.Many autoimmune diseases are tightly associated with inheritance of a particular allele at the major histocompatibility complex (MHC, also called human leucocyte antigen or HLA). …
- Study level
- Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
Characterisation of melanoma cell membranes to identify novel drug targets
Cell membrane structure and function are altered during tumour development, but to date comprehensive studies on the characterisation of cell membranes of a given cancer are scarce, or are only focused on a particular property (e.g. overall charge, global lipid composition, or specific lipid). In preliminary work we compared the lipidome (i.e. the lipid profile) of a panel of cells, and found the lipid composition of model melanoma cells to be distinct from that of other cancerous and non-cancerous cells. …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
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