June 6, 2014

Talking brains over a beer

How we measure ‘excitability’ in the brain will be explored by Dr Lezanne Ooi at the University of Wollongong’s (UOW) second Uni in the Brewery event for 2014 to be held on Wednesday 11 June.

The biomedical scientist from UOW’s Illawarra Health and Medical Research Institute (IHMRI) will discuss how advanced imaging and other techniques are used to compare the properties of brain cells from patients with diseases like Alzheimer’s against those of people without the disease.

“I have always been fascinated by the brain – it is often described as the last frontier.

There is still so much to find out about it, how it works on a cellular level and what happens when the brain goes awry in disease,” Dr Ooi said. “On a personal level, my grandmother has Alzheimer’s disease and, as a scientist, I need to understand the biological process that she is going through, to identify why it is that some people suffer from this disease and help contribute to knowledge that may one day aid the development of better treatments,” she said.

Dr Ooi, who specialises in cellular neuroscience or, the study of brain cells, cultures cells in a dish in an effort to discover more about degenerative brain diseases. The hope is that by identifying which molecules act to protect brain cells, targeted treatments come within closer reach. In her Uni in the Brewery talk, Dr Ooi will delve into the exciting medical research techniques that also use ‘reprogrammed’ skin cells donated by patients for disease modelling and drug discovery.

Before joining the Proteostasis and Disease Research Centre at IHMRI, Dr Ooi was based in the UK where she received her PhD in gene regulation and neurodegenerative disease from the University of Leeds.

She also worked for the pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline. For Dr Ooi, the disconnect between the pharmaceutical industry and institutional researchers is an issue of particular frustration.

“The lack of communication between different industry groups and academic labs working on the same research problems hampers real progress. It is an important hurdle to be overcome as medical research faces one of its greatest challenges -- how to address the needs of our growing ageing population,” Dr Ooi said.

“We have a number of excellent researchers working together to understand diseases like Alzheimer’s at IHMRI. Collaboration is fundamental to research and it is one of the most collaborative environments I have encountered,” she said.

Dr Ooi has a degree in Biochemistry from the University of York (UK) and joined UOW in 2012 as a Lecturer in Biological Sciences.

The title of Dr Ooi’s talk is ‘Reprogrammed skin cells: revolutionising medical research’.

It will be held from 5.30pm to 6.30pm on 11 June at Five Islands Brewery, Harbour St, Wollongong. The event is free and open to the public.

Registration essential: uow-uib.eventbrite.com.au