Nominating Committee- 2024 – 2026
Claudia Nold, PhD
National Health and Medical Research Council, Future Leader – Fellow
Associate Member of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences
Group Head at the Hudson Institute of Medical Research
Monash University, Department of Pediatrics, Australia
Prof Claudia Nold is an expert in immunology and molecular medicine. After her graduation from pharmacy school in 2000, she was awarded a competitive three-year PhD scholarship by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and started her PhD at the Pharmazentrum Frankfurt, Germany. This scholarship entailed a 6-month tenure at the Institute of Asthma and Allergy at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden. From 2006 until 2009 she held a post-doctoral position in Denver, Colorado, USA in the laboratory of Professor Charles A. Dinarello. In 2009 she was recruited to The Ritchie Centre at Hudson Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne.
The discovery of the anti-inflammatory function of IL-37, which Claudia co-published in Nature Immunology in 2010, had a major impact on the interleukin field and necessitated a reorganisation of the IL-1 family nomenclature. Five years later, she and her team discovered the IL-37 receptor complex and in 2017 Claudia published critical regions in the IL-37 structure that led to generation of a modified IL-37 biologic with enhanced anti-inflammatory properties. Overall, Claudia’s research aims to develop novel immunotherapeutic’s or repurpose existing anti-inflammatory drugs for a range of early life inflammatory diseases such as bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) and necrotising enterocolitis. Her pre-clinical research discovered that IL-1 receptor antagonist (Kineret) prevents BPD and was the foundation for an investigator-initiated Phase I/IIa safety and feasibility trial to prevent the impact of perinatal inflammation in extremely premature infants at Monash Newborn, Melbourne Australia.
There is an unmet medical need to better understand origins of early life diseases and find safe and effective treatments for our little patients in the neonatal intensive care unit.
