Gut reaction: Exploring the microbiome's effect on health

Please join the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences for our first Impact Panel of 2024, Gut reaction: Exploring the microbiome's effect on health with special guest Professor Kathy McCoy from the University of Calgary.

Kathy is an immunologist and Scientific Director of the International Microbiome Centre and a world-renowned expert on the microbiome and its impact on human health. Our panel will discuss a range of new approaches that harness the microbiome to promote health and prevent disease.

Panellists

Professor Kathy McCoy is an immunologist in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology at the University of Calgary. She leads the McCoy Laboratory which focuses on "the dynamic interplay between the gut microbiota and the innate and adaptive immune systems during homeostasis and inflammation." She's particularly interested in how exposure to bacteria in early life stages can affect immune-mediated diseases, such as allergy and autoimmunity, later in life.

Professor Sammy Bedoui is an immunologist at the University of Melbourne. His research examines how dendritic cells and T cells interact in the initiation and maintenance of effective adaptive immune responses during infection and cancer, with a particular interest in deciphering how innate signals and cues from the microbiome shape these interactions. Sammy has a medical degree from the Hannover Medical School in Germany and heads a laboratory at the Doherty Institute. He teaches immunology to undergraduate students and leads an International Research Training Group with the University of Bonn in Germany. He co-leads Discovery Research at the Doherty and has previously held positions at WEHI in Melbourne and at the National Institute of Neuroscience in Tokyo, Japan.

Professor Elisa Hill-Yardin is a neuroscientist from RMIT researching the interactions between the nervous system and the microbiome. Elisa has shown that gene mutations associated with autism alter neuron numbers in the enteric nervous system of the gut and modify gut contractility and permeability. She also found that these nervous system changes disrupt the microbiome, modify responses to inflammation and alter behaviour in mice. Her expertise includes the characterization of gut functions including motility and permeability using a range of imaging and anatomical techniques in rodent models of disease. Professor Hill-Yardin has published several articles investigating the links between gut bacteria and neurological conditions such as autism spectrum disorder.