Tuesday 19 June 2018 10:40pm
Dr Jaydee Cabral.
A project that could help thousands of people who suffer from hearing disorders won the Brain and Technology Symposium 2018 Challenge held recently.
The competition aimed to initiate collaboration between two New Zealand Centres of Research Excellence – Brain Research New Zealand (BRNZ) and MedTech CoRE.
Dr Jaydee Cabral, a biomedical scientist based in the University of Otago’s Department of Chemistry is a member of the MedTech CoRE.
Her group – which is made up of BRNZ and MedTech CoRE researchers from the University of Auckland and Callaghan Innovation – won the competition with a project which aims to develop a novel method for drug delivery to the inner ear.
“This proposal brings together experts in auditory function, surgical procedures in the ear, as well as drug formulations and supporting media to investigate a novel drug delivery method via the intratympanic route for safe, accurate and reliable treatment of acute and chronic hearing disorders,” Dr Cabral explains.
"It is great to come together as a team from various disciplines and be successful in receiving support for a novel drug delivery idea ..."
She says the project is still in its early stages, and that they are in the process of setting up the inner ear model for drug delivery.
Dr Cabral says the team was thrilled to win the $25,000 award.
“It is great to come together as a team from various disciplines and be successful in receiving support for a novel drug delivery idea that could help thousands of patients that suffer from hearing disorders.”
The team (back row from left) Associate Professor Srdjan Vlajkovic, Professor Poul Nielsen, Philip Sanders, Usman Ghani, Dr Mithila Durai and Dr Beverly Chen. Front row (from left) Dr Jaydee Cabral and Christine Ying Yan Fok. Absent: Professr Peter Thorne, Dr Paul Harris, Dr Michel Neeff, Dr Miriam Scadeng and Dr Phil Bird.