Location:
Berg Family Foundation Seminar Room, Level 6, Wallace Wurth Building, Kensington Campus, UNSW Sydney
Contact for enquiries
Rata Joseph, +61 (2) 9385 0900 or recpt@kirby.unsw.edu.au
Kirby Institute Seminar Series presents
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Staff Specialist, St Vincent's Hospital Dr Winnie Tong has been a Staff Specialist since 2014 with public and private practices in allergy, autoimmunity and immunodeficiency. MBBS PhD FRACP FRCPA. Completed PhD 2016 studying human papillomavirus-specific T-cell responses. Established outpatient allergy service at St Vincent’s in 2014. |
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Research Officer, Garvan Institute Dr Dan Suan grew up in Perth and studied medicine before moving to Sydney to train as an Immunologist. He completed his PhD in in 2015 in the lab of Rob Brink investigating memory B cells and plasma cells emerging from the germinal centre response. |
Abstracts
De-labelling patients with antibiotic allergy in Sydney adult and paediatric hospital allergy services - towards standardisation and improved patient outcomes
Dr Winnie Tong
One in four Australians in hospital report an antibiotic allergy, leading their medical records to be labelled as such. However, many people are incorrectly labelled with an allergy, promoting the unnecessary use of more expensive, broader-spectrum antibiotics. This is associated with longer and more complicated hospital stays, and contributes to development of multidrug resistant bacteria. At the same time, an average of three Australian patients still die every year from being given antibiotics to which they are truly allergic.
At present, the only way to safely “de-label” an antibiotic allergy is to be tested and challenged at a specialist hospital allergy service. This testing is not standardised, is labour and time intensive, and difficult to access. This project will build a new collaboration between five children and adult hospital specialist allergy services in Sydney. The aims are to describe and critically review current practice, then standardise de-labelling protocols according to best current available evidence. This will build capacity to improve access to antibiotic allergy de-labelling services, improve the dissemination of appropriate advice after de-labelling, and develop education resources for dissemination of best practice into other non-hospital settings. This will provide safer and more cost-effective care for all.
Single cell genomic interrogation of self-reactive clones in human autoimmune diseases
Dr Dan Suan
Autoimmunity is much more prevalent than recognised, and reflects the loss of tolerance towards self-antigens by a small fraction of a person's immune system. Here I will outline a project which aims to identify and interrogate the genomic landscape of single, self-reactive clones from patients with a spectrum of human autoimmune diseases.