About the Respiratory Research Group

Judith Black founded the Respiratory Research Group, together with Carol Armour, in 1980. The primary focus of the group is cellular and molecular biology and pharmacology of asthma, fibroproliferative lung disease, lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

The group is located in the School of Medical Sciences in the Sydney Medical School and in the Faculty of Pharmacy, and has had continuous support from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia and The Asthma Foundation of New South Wales. The group constitutes the Cell Biology Group of the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research and is the University of Sydney node of the CRC for Asthma and Airways. We provide projects for PhD, Masters and Honours students, as well as for Postdoctoral Fellows from both Australia and overseas, in addition to options for the Graduate Medical Program, the Combined Degree Program (MBBS/PhD) and the Master of Pharmacy (Clinical).

We grow cells from donated lung tissue to understand what goes wrong in chronic lung diseases such as asthma, lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM) and smoking related lung diseases such as emphysema and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). We aim to discover new treatments and/or improve existing ones.

The group has established one of the largest collection facilities for human lung tissue in the world against a background of collaboration and goodwill from physicians, surgeons, pathologists and transplant coordinators. This ready availability of human lung tissue positions the group to address pivotal questions about the underlying pathophysiological events in chronic lung disease. In recent years the group has successfully cultured airway cells from biopsies from asthmatic volunteers.

We have research collaborations through the CRC with groups in Newcastle and Western Australia and ongoing joint research projects with Michael Roth from University Hospital, Basel, with exchange of cells, tissues and research personnel between our groups. In our studies on LAM we are collaborating with Professor Vera Krymskaya in Philadelphia, USA.