Respiratory and Infectious Diseases Research

Our Aim: Provide every Mater lung patient with the opportunity to join a clinical trial.

Our Purpose: Improve access to frontline treatments through collaborative research.

The Respiratory and Infectious Disease Research Group is a multidisciplinary research team comprising doctors, nurses, allied health professionals and basic scientists, that is engaged in cross disciplinary and translational research with a particular focus on respiratory and infectious diseases. 

Our group is very strong in clinical trials and supports a world class Clinical Trials Unit (CTU). The Respiratory, Infectious Disease and Other (RIO) CTU is capable of running a range of clinical trials from Phase 1 through to Phase 4. It commonly achieves the highest site recruitment for global clinical trials and has the versatility to support clinical trials involving genetically modified organisms (GMO’s), vaccines, infusions, nebulised therapies as well as inhaled and oral treatments.

The Respiratory and Infectious Diseases Group also manages the David Serisier Respiratory Biobank (DSRB), a broad clinical repository of human samples. The DSRB holds blood, peripheral blood mononuclear cells, serum, sputum, tissue, stool, urine and human bronchial epithelial cells from a wide range of healthy and respiratory patient cohorts including cystic fibrosis, bronchiectasis, asthma, lung cancer and COVID-19.

Our group contributes data to several national clinical registries including:

Our researchers have attracted external funding as both chief investigators and associate investigators from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and the Medical Research Futures Fund (MRFF) to enable us to progress clinical and translational research in a broad spectrum of respiratory illnesses including COVID-19, lung cancer, bronchiectasis, non-tuberculous mycobacterium and cystic fibrosis.

The group currently supports two PhD students and welcomes expressions of interest from other students who would like to pursue studies in this research area.

Principal investigators:

A/Prof Paul Griffin

Dr Rob Carroll

Dr Adrian Barnett