Sabrina Sofia Burgener

My research program focuses on the understanding how targeting an intracellular innate immune sensing complex, called the inflammasome, drives chronic inflammatory diseases such as chronic liver disease and Alzheimer's disease. Inflammasome inhibitors offer tremendous promise as new disease-modifying therapeutics. Inhibitors of one inflammasome (the NLRP3 inflammasome) are now entering Phase 2 clinical trials for the treatment of genetic auto-inflammatory and neurodegenerative diseases. Broader-spectrum inhibitors that block multiple inflammasomes (e.g. caspase-1 inhibitors) are currently under development for clinical use in diseases that involve pathological signalling by multiple inflammasomes (e.g. chronic liver disease). But such beneficial functions of these new therapeutics might come at a cost – a “trade-off” – as inflammasome signalling also prevents infections. My research program elucidates two major parts

1. Characterizing the disease-driving function of caspase-1 in chronic liver disease model

2. To define the therapeutic trade-offs of these inflammasome-modulatory agents by rendering individuals susceptible to infections

Since my appointment in 2019 as a Senior Research Fellow in Professor Kate Schroder's labratory, I have worked and collaborated in other projects that were designed to further understand how inflammasomes drive chronic inflammatory diseases. In addition, since I joined the lab, I have been promoted to Deputy Lab Head of the Disease modelling Team and secured a two Fellowship, Swiss National Science Foundation (2020-2022) and Novartis Foundation for Medical-Biological Research (2022-2023) and had been honored with international prize (2020), and together with Prof. Kate Schroder secured a 2021 UQ Australian Infectious Disease Research Excellence Award.

As a supervisor and mentor of HDR students, my vision is to support each student's individual goals and work together to achieve them. Even more important is to facilitate an effective, honest and healthy work environment that each student but also other team members feel capable of performing their best and that we work together to accomplish a common goal. In my role as supervisor, it is in my interest to facilitate a space for creativity and encourage studetns to bring in their own ideas and workflow. By passing on scientific knowledge, love and passion for science, there is nothing more rewarding than seeing the younger generation of scientists developing their independence and success beyond the time we worked together.