Muhammed B. Sabdia, Mater Research Institute, The University of Queensland

The AAN warmly congratulates Muhammed B. Sabdia, a final year PhD student at the Mater Research Institute, The University of Queensland who was awarded the 2024 Snowdome Gunn Family Haematology Fellowship.

With generous funding from the Gunn Family Foundation, the Snowdome Foundation invited applications for a haematological amyloidosis research project that could accelerate clinical trials for patients with amyloidosis and related disorders.

Muhammed will focus on a proposed personalised immunotherapeutic approach, that harnesses AL patient’s own T-cell immunity to eradicate that patient’s unique disease. To stimulate T-cell neoantigen immunity in patients with AL amyloidosis, Muhammed, in collaboration with the BASE mRNA facility at The University of Queensland, will design and develop personalized mRNA vaccines. These mRNA vaccines will direct a patient’s T-cells to target unique proteins on the patient’s unique plasma cells called neoantigens.

Dr Matthew Burrage, The University of Queensland

Year 2023 Postdoctoral Fellowship

Years funded: 2024 – 2026

Cardiac amyloidosis is an increasingly common, yet life-threatening disease caused by abnormal protein build-up within the heart. Newly available treatments for cardiac amyloidosis have emphasised the importance of early diagnosis and management.

Current non-invasive diagnostic tests (e.g., bone scans, MRI) are poorly suited for disease screening and monitoring as they are time-consuming and require radiation, radioactive tracers, or contrast agents (often not recommended in many patients).

This research aims to further develop a “virtual contrast” artificial-intelligence-based MRI technology called Virtual Native Enhancement (VNE) as a fast, safe, cheap, radiation- and contrast-free tool for the diagnosis of cardiac amyloidosis.

Analysis of heart biopsy samples and novel blood biomarkers, including immune cell signalling, aims to provide a tool to differentiate between the types of amyloidosis that can affect the heart.