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 18 matching student topics
Displaying 1–12 of 18 results
Engineering Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T cell for the treatment of cancer
Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T cells are genetically modified immune cells that can recognise and kill cancer cells. They do so through the CAR, which recognises specific antigens expressed on cancer cells. CAR T cell therapy has emerged as an effective form of cancer immunotherapy in certain types of blood cancers and are now approved for use in patients. However, CAR T cell therapy can only benefit a very small proportion of cancer patients at present because it is very …
- Study level
- 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 (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
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
Renewal and differentiation in human neural stem cells and their application to understanding neurological disorders
The effective regeneration of brain tissue requires an understanding of the factors mediating the damage as well as the integration of new/replacement cells to form new functional neural networks. The isolation and expansion of human stem cells and limited neural lineage differentiation have provided the foundation for strategies in the treatment of neurodegenerative disorders. We utilise iPSC-derived NPCs and patient-derived (Alzheimer’s disease; AD) iPSCs and neural lineage differentiation of hMSCs, iPSC NPCs and AD iPSCs in neuronal and glial culture …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
Why do epithelial cells have antigen processing machinery?
Epithelial Cells (ECs) constitute the border between the host immune system and an environment teeming with inhaled antigens. Work from us and others has highlighted that ECs have the ability to express the antigen processing and presentation machinery, Major Histocompatibility Complex class II (MHC II) that is important in initiating immune responses. MHC II expression and function on mucosal epithelial cells, is not well understood.Whilst MHC II is expressed by ECs, and is altered with inflammation, there is a paucity …
- Study level
- Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
Investigating DNA repair mechanisms in aging adult stem cells
When we age the DNA repair systems of our cells become down regulated. This results in reduced DNA repair capacity, enhanced rates of mutation load and may lead to the development of chronic aging-associated diseases including osteoporosis, Alzheimer's and cancer(1). So it is no surprise that genome instability and stem cell exhaustion, which also strongly correlates with the accumulation of DNA damage, are considered hallmarks of aging(2).However, we still lack a clear understanding on how the decrease in DNA repair …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
Understanding the immunological mechanisms that regulate increased susceptibility to respiratory syncytial viral infection after stem cell transplantation
Allogeneic stem cell transplantation (alloSCT) is considered the gold standard procedure for the treatment of blood cancers. Globally, over 9000 patients per year undergo this high-risk, life-saving therapy. However, major complications limit the therapeutic potential of this treatment which include graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) and infections due to the severe immunosuppression in these patients. Respiratory syncytial viral (RSV) infection is frequent in these patients, is often fatal and clearly a significant clinical problem. Thus, there is a pressing need for new …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
Spatial localisation of immunoglobulin A in the gastrointestinal tract.
Blood cancers, which include leukaemia, lymphoma and myeloma account for 10% of all cancers and 9.4% of cancer deaths. Stem cell transplantation (SCT) is the predominant curative therapy for these diseases. However, a major complication is graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) in which the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, skin, lung and liver are preferentially damaged by the transplanted donor immune system, limiting the therapeutic potential of this treatment. Thus, there is a pressing need for new treatment approaches to improve transplant outcome for …
- Study level
- Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
Understanding the role of the hSSB1 protein in the response to UV induced DNA damage
Melanoma is the 4th most common cancer in Australia. The link between skin cancer and UV exposure is now well established. If a DNA damage induced by UV exposure is left unrepaired, the mutation generated in the genome can lead to cell death or cancer. It is thus highly important to understand of how a cell can repair DNA damage. The main pathway to repair UV DNA damaged is the nucleotide excision repair pathway (NER) (Kamileri I. et al, Trends …
- Study level
- Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Health
- School
- School of Biomedical Sciences
Development of a 3D Printed Nasal Model to Study Viral-Airway Interactions
As airway infections become pandemic worldwide, airway models to investigate pathogen infection mechanism and nasal drug delivery is now increasingly important. However, current airway models cannot mimic the triad coupling of human nasal anatomical geometries, aerosol flow and biological responses (e.g. infection and inflammation) from the nasal epithelium.Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models are used for simulating pathological airflow patterns resulting from anatomical structural changes of the nasal cavities, but they cannot measure phenotypic or functional alterations in the nasal epithelium …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Mechanical, Medical and Process Engineering
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Biomedical Technologies
Advanced materials for perovskite solar cells
Solar cells using metal halides perovskite materials to absorb light is one of the most important scientific discoveries. These cells have the potential to provide cost-effective solar electricity in the future. In the last decades, perovskite solar cells (PSCs) demonstrated unprecedented progress towards this goal. This technology holds the world record for energy conversion efficiency and is comparable to commercial crystalline silicon, but at a much lower cost.Currently their instability and use of toxic lead are key issues that restrict …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Chemistry and Physics
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Materials Science
Centre for Clean Energy Technologies and Practices
Design, derivation, and implementation of mesh-free finite volume solvers based on 3D unit cell morphology to estimate biomass particle effective parameters
The aim of this PhD project is to use lignocellulosic morphological features extracted from high resolution micro-CT images of biomass particles undergoing a dilute acid pretreatment process to perform computational homogenisation over representative unit cell configurations. Mesh-free finite volume solvers will be developed based on 3D point cloud data sets to estimate virtual biomass particle effective parameters, such as diffusivity, thermal conductivity, and permeability. The simulation results will be analysed to provide a fundamental understanding of the impact that changes …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Mathematical Sciences
Contact us
If you have questions about the best options for you, the application process, your research topic, finding a supervisor or anything else, get in touch with us today.