Making a big difference for tiny babies

In business it’s called vertical integration – when the same organisation controls multiple stages of the production process. The medical research equivalent of vertical integration is rare – which is why Hudson Institute is fortunate to have husbandand-wife team Professors Claudia and Marcel Nold, who are engaged in a hugely beneficial working partnership.

“The word ‘research’ is made up of re (meaning ‘again’) and search, so you search, search again and again.

Marcel explains their discovery, published in Science Translational Medicine: “Type-2polarised inflammation drives cardiopulmonary disease in these babies, allowing us to now work on ways to control inflammation in preterm babies and avoid the damage it wreaks.”

The exciting moment is when we find what we were looking for, or something unexpected that now makes total biological sense.”

Professor Claudia Nold

Their combined skills are bringing new treatments for preterm babies, from laboratory discovery to clinical trials in Monash Children’s Hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).

With a background in pharmacology, Claudia spends her time searching for new ways to safeguard the health of tiny infants – aiming to prevent bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD), necrotising enterocolitis, and other illnesses, as well as collaborating on prevention of cerebral palsy. She jointly heads the Interventional Immunology in Early Life Diseases Research group.

Meanwhile Marcel, a clinician-scientist, splits his time between the lab and Monash Children’s Hospital, where he’s hands-on with babies like Max (see page 28) and their families during their early difficult days.

These pioneering collaborators are now close to achieving something once thought impossible. Based on decades of work, they are within reach of a treatment to control inflammation in preterm babies that can cause devastating heart, lung, gut and brain conditions.

A remarkable year

In 2022, they identified the specific inflammatory responses that drive illnesses of prematurity and revealed several risk factors both before and after birth.

“It’s one of those ‘eureka’ moments,” says Claudia.

“Like when we discovered the anti-inflammatory function of one of the molecules we were investigating, which we now are developing into a drug.”

They also further advanced their clinical trial of the anti-inflammatory drug anakinra, and they are cautiously positive about the results.

Collaborators 13 University of Technology; Australian Synchrotron, Centenary Institute; CSL Limited, Hunter Medical Research Institute; Mater Research Institute; Mercy Hospital for Women; Monash Children’s Hospital; Monash University; Murdoch Children’s Research Institute; Royal Women’s Hospital; University of Adelaide; University of Melbourne; Victorian Heart Institute; Helios HSK, Germany; National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center Research Institute, Japan; St. Vincent’s Hospital, Germany

Funders Australian Synchrotron; CSL Ltd; Jack Brockhoff Foundation; National Heart Foundation; NHMRC; Rebecca L Cooper Foundation