Dr Kylie Quinn wins British Society for Research on Ageing’s best speaker award
Dr Kylie Quinn wins British Society for Research on Ageings Best Speaker Award
Dr Kylie Quinn, a Research Fellow at Monash University’s Biomedicine Discovery Institute, recently spoke at the Ageing Cell Conference, held by the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, UK, where she won the best speaker prize awarded by the British Society for Research on Ageing.
Selected from a field of 45 abstracts from early career researchers (ECRs), Dr Quinn spoke about her current research which aims to understand why CD8 – or ‘Killer’ T cells – lose activity with age, and then to identify and test drugs to recover this activity.
With an established international profile in immunological and vaccine research, Dr Quinn’s current project is an exciting fusion: understanding the basic biology that causes ageing in the immune system and also applying that fundamental knowledge to improve immune function and improve vaccines and therapies.
One of only four ECRs selected for a speaking slot, Dr Quinn was pleased to receive this recognition in a relatively new field for her.
“The opportunity to discuss my research first-hand with leading researchers reinforced that there is lots to be learned- and lots to be gained - for the health of older people in this field,” Dr Quinn said.
“I find this line of research is intensely motivating as it is important for the health of individuals but it is also critical for the health of our society to extend the ‘healthspan’ of people alongside their lifespan, thereby enabling older people to participate in their community and keeping people healthy and happy for longer,” she said.
The conference focused on mechanisms of cellular ageing, with a particular focus on cell signaling, epigenetics and the immune system. Some leading researchers in the ageing field presented at the conference, including plenaries from Professor Dame Linda Partridge and Professor David Gems from the University College of London.
Dr Quinn’s research is targeting a subset of ‘Killer’ T cells that exhibit increased survival, aiming to recover their activity. This would improve responses to vaccines and would improve adoptive T cell therapy in older individuals. The next step in this research is to begin testing drugs to see if these cells’ activity can be recovered.
Having previously worked at the Vaccine Research Center at the NIH, Dr Quinn aims to design vaccine regimens tailored specifically for the needs of older individuals.
“There is so much work to be done here - drug and therapeutic development often takes place in younger subjects, but an aged physiology often requires a distinct approach,” Dr Quinn said.