Infectious disease and sepsis research fund - University of 天美传媒鈥� UOW

Help UOW develop new drugs to save lives

Infectious disease and sepsis are life threatening and preventable. Your support today will empower researchers at UOW’s Molecular Horizons to accelerate drug development for infections like StrepA, enable earlier sepsis diagnosis and move proven solutions into care.

“Simple infections can become serious very quickly, with little warning and can be devastating for children and vulnerable members of society. Our team is at the forefront of the global effort to characterise and contain outbreaks and develop treatments for infections like StrepA."

"Early detection of serious conditions like sepsis is critical for getting people the right treatment and saving lives. Researchers in Molecular Horizons are pioneering faster, more personalised diagnostics to ensure people get the right treatment quickly."

“This will not only keep our children safe in Australia but will benefit communities around the world.” - Professor Martina Sanderson Smith

With your gift today, you can:

$50 – equip labs with essentials like petri dishes, pipette tips and reagents.
$100 – fund a full day of bench work investigating how deadly pathogens evade the immune system.
$250 – advance rapid diagnostic tools to detect sepsis early and save lives.
$500 – support the creation of new drugs to fight infection.
$1,000 – launch a pilot study exploring novel treatments for antibiotic resistant infections and sepsis.
$5,000 – drive translational research that bridges lab discoveries to clinical settings, bringing hope to communities worldwide.
$10,000 – back a year of hands-on laboratory research for a student or early career scientist, accelerating discoveries in sepsis and infectious disease while nurturing future leaders in medical science.

Meet Dr Lisanne Spenkelink

Sepsis kills 11 million people annually - that's around one in 5 deaths. At UOW's Molecular Horizons, Dr Lisanne Spenkelink and her team are working to develop ultra-rapid, low-cost diagnostics that could help identify sepsis before symptoms appear.

Sepsis kills about 11 million people annually. That is about one in five deaths globally. The disease progression with sepsis is very, very rapid. My goal is simple, to make sepsis a disease that we can stop before it even starts. The primary outcome would be a device that can be deployed in hospitals, but also remote clinics that can diagnose sepsis fast, accurately, and is cheap.

I have over a decade's worth of experience in the development and use of single molecule methodologies. And in the last couple of years, we have developed these sensors that are already being used internationally that can really detect single biomarkers. The first thing that's new and different is the methodology. Think about trying to detect these sepsis biomarkers, which are the signals in our blood that indicate that something is wrong. When sepsis symptoms haven't occurred, those biomarkers are present at very, very low amounts.

And it's like comparing it to looking for a needle in a haystack. So to be able to do this is going to change how we diagnose sepsis in young children.

Donate to the Infectious Disease and Sepsis Research Fund

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