Helping premature babies to breathe at birth - Translating research to the delivery room

Dr Erin McGillick is helping more newborns to make a successful transition to air-breathing, thanks to work undertaken in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in Leiden, The Netherlands.

Dr McGillick, a postdoctoral fellow in Professor Stuart Hooper’s research group, is using synchrotron light to identify ways to help babies born from complicated pregnancies breathe better on their own after birth.

She has just spent three months working with Associate Professor Arjan te Pas and his team at Leiden University Medical Centre, to get a taste of clinical research and translate her team’s preclinical findings to the delivery room.

This travel was supported by the Australian Society for Medical Research’s International Research Award and the Perinatal Society of Australia and New Zealand (PSANZ) David Henderson-Smart Scholarship.

“Associate Professor te Pas and his team in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit are world leaders in delivery room research and integrating preclinical evidence into clinical trials to improve newborn outcomes,” Dr McGillick says.

“As a physiologist, being immersed in a clinical research environment allowed me to gain invaluable insights as I continue to focus my research on addressing issues of critical clinical importance in perinatal medicine.

“I worked as part of a team leading a clinical trial to translate our laboratory’s preclinical findings from our synchrotron imaging experiments. This will improve the transition to spontaneous breathing in the delivery room.

“This work is aimed at improving clinical management guidelines in the delivery room to help the transition from fetal to newborn life and improve respiratory outcomes in premature babies.”

Dr McGillick was also invited to present her findings to the Department of Obstetrics and Department of Paediatrics in Leiden and attended the ‘9th Dresden Symposium on Delivery Room Management, Asphyxia, Hypothermia and Stem Cell Research’ in Germany.

In early 2019, Dr McGillick will return to Leiden to complete further studies, thanks to support from the PSANZ David Henderson-Smart Scholarship.