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The Western Australian Epithelial Research Program (WAERP) is a community cohort biobank that collects and stores airway cells from the upper (nose) and lower (trachea) airways of Western Australian children and adults (1-50 years of age) undergoing non respiratory elective surgery.
The Western Australian Epithelial Research Program (WAERP) biobank is undertaking a number of research projects intended to improve the understanding and preclinical assessment of therapeutics for respiratory conditions.
The Australian Epithelial Research Program (WAERP) comprises of several parties, including our Chief Investigators, Compliance, Scientific and Clinical Teams, and our Student group.
The Scientific Advisory Committee's (SAC) role is to provide scientific direction and to ensure the objectives of WAERP are reflected in the research performed; SAC forms part of our governance structure.
Want to know how to be involved with WAERP? Or how long the project is running for? View our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for answers to these questions and more.
Research
Differential cell counts using center-point networks achieves human-level accuracy and efficiency over segmentationDifferential cell counts is a challenging task when applying computer vision algorithms to pathology. Existing approaches to train cell recognition require high availability of multi-class segmentation and/or bounding box annotations and suffer in performance when objects are tightly clustered.
Research
Phage therapy for multi-drug resistant respiratory tract infectionsThe emergence of multi-drug resistant (MDR) bacteria is recognised today as one of the greatest challenges to public health. As traditional antimicrobials are becoming ineffective and research into new antibiotics is diminishing, a number of alternative treatments for MDR bacteria have been receiving greater attention. Bacteriophage therapies are being revisited and present a promising opportunity to reduce the burden of bacterial infection in this post-antibiotic era.
Research
A screening tool to identify risk for bronchiectasis progression in children with cystic fibrosisThe marked heterogeneity in cystic fibrosis (CF) disease complicates the selection of those most likely to benefit from existing or emergent treatments. We aimed to predict the progression of bronchiectasis in preschool children with CF.
Research
Dysregulated Notch Signaling in the Airway Epithelium of Children with WheezeThe airway epithelium of children with wheeze is characterized by defective repair that contributes to disease pathobiology. Dysregulation of developmental processes controlled by Notch has been identified in chronic asthma. However, its role in airway epithelial cells of young children with wheeze, particularly during repair, is yet to be determined.