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The Centre of Research Excellence for Nucleic Acid Sensing brings together a diverse and collaborative team of experts in immunology and inflammatory pathways, rare disease genetics and modelling, nucleic acid therapeutics, genetic counselling and diagnosis, management of neurodevelopmental disorders and translational science.

Our transdisciplinary themes directly address key knowledge gaps that exist in the pathology of autoimmune and autoinflammatory diseases, as we seek to define the ligands that initiate aberrant activation of inflammatory pathways, to model selected diseases in the laboratory, and then use the combined knowledge gained to generate and test new therapeutic candidates.

Research aims

Our aim is to lay the foundations to enable development of diagnostics, therapeutics and treatments for both common inflammatory disorders and rare, presently intractable diseases through:

• Greatly improved knowledge of the biology and mechanisms of aberrant nucleic acid sensing
• Implementation of novel methodologies to define the ligand triggers of nucleic acid sensing pathways, and development of novel, sensor-specific modulators
• Preclinical testing of tractable targets that can be used to reduce disease symptoms and severity and, ultimately, effectively treat diseases associated with aberrant “self” sensing.

Research underway