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 75 matching student topics
Displaying 61–72 of 75 results
Immunotherapy for autoimmune disease using T cell receptor-modified T-regulatory cells (PhD)
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.The autoimmune diseases we study are described as "organ-specific", which means the unwanted immune response attacks either a single organ, or a collection of organs …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
Defining human immune responses to a healthy gut microbiome
Many human diseases are thought to involve interactions between the gut microbiome and the immune system which shape the nature and function of immunity. These interactions between host and environment are thought to be critical regulators of health and disease.In autoimmune diseases many studies have associated presence or absence of particular microbial species with diseases and some studies have shown influence of disease-related genetics on the composition of the gut microbiome. However, no studies to date have formally addressed the …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
- Research centre(s)
-
Centre for Microbiome Research
Characterising drivers of melanoma cell heterogeneity
Tumour cell heterogeneity is linked to tumour progression through the generation of divergent cellular behaviours such as proliferation, survival, invasion and therapy resistance. Crucially, conventional and targeted therapies generally only target highly proliferative cells in tumours leading to initial tumour regression, however alternative sub-populations underpin the return of treatment refractory disease and facilitate metastatic spread. Our laboratory is focused on understanding the regulatory drivers of cellular plasticity in melanoma to better understand progression and metastatic spread of this disease and …
- Study level
- Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
Understanding the genetics of melanoma susceptibility: many roads lead to DNA repair
Repair of the damage caused by mutagens such as UV and reactive oxygen species is vital to prevent cancer and premature aging and accordingly cells have developed a suite of intricate and specific DNA repair pathways. Loss or abnormal function of components of these pathways lead to cancer pre-disposition syndromes for example breast cancer in individuals carrying mutations in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes. Understanding the complexities of these DNA repair pathways is vital to efforts aimed at preventing or …
- Study level
- Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
Dissecting the molecular and cellular basis of melanoma susceptibility
Several factors strongly influence an individual’s chance of developing melanoma. Paramount amongst these are the number of moles (nevi) present on the skin, cumulative levels of UV exposure and skin pigmentation phenotype. Numerous Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS) we have identified gene variants at a number of loci that are strongly associated with cutaneous nevi (mole) counts, UV damage response and accordingly susceptibility of individuals to develop melanoma. Currently the functional impact of genetic variants in the genes IRF4, PLA2G6 …
- Study level
- Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
A novel molecular targeted therapy for anaplastic prostate cancer
In advanced PCa, where the cancer has spread into the bone and other organs, the emergence of treatment resistance remains inevitable. For decades the primary form of treatment in advanced PCa has been to target the production and actions of male sex hormones, androgens, the primary developmental and survival factor of prostate tissue. While these therapies result in tumour regression and cancer control, this is temporary and treatment resistance occurs, referred to as castrate resistant prostate cancer (CRPC). In the …
- Study level
- Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
Computational drug repurposing for neuropsychiatric disease
While hundreds of robust genetic associations have been found for neuropsychiatric disease (such as schizophrenia, major depression, and anxiety) understanding the exact molecular mechanisms leading to disease onset and progression remains challenging. Inherited (i.e. genetic) risk factors for many neuropsychiatric diseases converge on genes that are co-ordinately expressed (co-expressed) in a disease-relevant tissue (e.g. brain). The study of how genetic risk factors affect co-expressed genes (i.e. gene co-expression analysis) has the potential to uncover new biological processes underlying disease onset. …
- Study level
- 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
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
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
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
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
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