Health, Medical and Biosecurity
Infrastructure and expertise for the rapid development of medical countermeasure technologies and products to provide effective protection of Defence personnel from a range of chemical, biological and radiological threats, pandemics and emerging infectious diseases.
UWA competitive advantage
- Extensive experience handling and manipulating security sensitive biological agents (SSBAs), in vitro testing of novel drugs, virulence screening of biological threat agents at Physical Containment (PC) level 2 laboratories, and experimental and in vivo testing at PC3 laboratories.
- Antimicrobial resistance including developing medical countermeasures to deadly human fungal bio-warfare and bio-terrorism agents, and antibacterial targets and therapies to specific bacteria.
- Development of superior sensing technologies for detection of, and methodologies to rapidly identify, decontaminate and eliminate SSBAs.
- Identify, decontaminate and eliminate critical bio-warfare and bio-terrorism threats to food security and food exports.
- Identification of naturally self-decontaminating materials, relevant to the sterilisation of military equipment (vehicles, armament, clothing etc.) following overseas deployments.
- Human Performance Optimisation through injury management, spinal cord repair, soft tissue regeneration, enhanced cooling from hyperthermia, mechanisms of and delay of muscle fatigue.
- Chemical measurement of stress, assessment tools for screening and early detection of mental health problems and remote health provision using wearables.
Key contacts
Dr Mitali Sarkar-Tyson
Senior Research Fellow, School of Biomedical Sciences, Division of Infection and Immunity, Marshall Centre for Infectious Diseases
Email: mitali.sarkar-tyson@uwa.edu.au
Phone: +61 8 6457 2662
Associate Professor Keith Stubbs
School of Molecular Sciences
Email: keith.stubbs@uwa.edu.au
Phone: +61 8 6488 2725
Outcomes and impact
- UWA researchers are focused on identifying new antibiotics that are capable of treating a broad range of bio-warfare agents with a reduced chance of developing antimicrobial resistance.
- UWA has funding partnerships with the UK Ministry of Defence, the Singapore Ministry of Defence, and the Defence Science Technology Group.
Capabilities and facilities
Facilities include:
- Physical Containment (PC) level 3 laboratories
- Biosafety level 2 and level 3 experimental and animal laboratories
- Chemical and biochemical laboratories (Bayliss Building)