Director’s Report

Welcome to the first issue of Brain Matters for 2021. I hope that this issue finds you and your loved ones healthy and happy. In the last edition, I talked about how the Florey’s researchers have felt an obligation to turn their attention to the challenges caused by COVID-19. As you’ll see in our cover story, our researchers Professor Kevin Barnham and Dr Leah Beauchamp were among the first in the world to sound the alarm on the possible neurological impacts of COVID-19. Drawing on their combined expertise in Parkinson’s disease and the olfactory system, as well as their knowledge of the historical example in the Spanish Flu outbreak that began in 1918, Kevin and Leah made national news with their work in this area. Not content to stop there, their laboratory remains hard at work as they seek to provide early methods of diagnosis to get ahead of the Parkinson’s disease public health crisis.

You’ll also read about some elegant and forward-thinking research conducted by Professor Clive May and Dr Yugeesh Lankadeva. You may recall from previous editions of Brain Matters that the duo have been investigating ways to treat sepsis which is the leading cause of deaths in intensive care units worldwide. Clive and Yugeesh described to me reading about multi-organ failure in people affected by COVID-19, and how they immediately set up a call to discuss whether their work in sepsis could help in developing a treatment.

For long-term friends of the Florey, you’ll know that our researchers often talk about the importance of pursuing science for ‘the long game’. To find new ways to understand, diagnose, treat and cure the illnesses we study can take time. I hope you join me in taking pride as you read how a man in his 40s in a critically ill condition due to COVID-19 was able to walk out of hospital after receiving the treatment regime developed by Clive and Yugeesh, in collaboration with their colleagues at Austin Health.

This example provides me with enormous hope for all of the illnesses that we study. With the generous support of people like you, Florey researchers are working every day to a future where prevention or treatments are available for every neurological and mental health condition that we research. Thank you for being on this journey with us.