Simon Apte

Simon’s research is focused on translating discoveries made directly in patients with serious lung disease into new treatments, diagnostic tests and approaches for monitoring disease.

A major area of impact has been silicosis associated with engineered-stone exposure. His research has been closely integrated with the clinical evaluation of whole-lung lavage as a treatment for silicosis, creating a rare translational platform in which a therapeutic intervention can be studied alongside clinical outcomes and biological material obtained directly from the distal lung. Samples generated through this program have supported a substantial biobank and enabled development of methods to quantify respirable crystalline silica within lung cells, investigate mechanisms of disease progression and identify potential markers of treatment response.

Whole-lung lavage and bronchoalveolar lavage have also provided access to large numbers of primary human alveolar macrophages, which have become a central experimental platform for the laboratory. These cells are used to define disease-associated macrophage states, investigate mechanisms of pulmonary fibrosis and screen potential therapies in a physiologically relevant human system rather than relying solely on conventional cell lines or animal models. Access to explanted human lungs through lung transplantation, together with matched blood, lavage and clinical data, further enables molecular discoveries to be validated directly in diseased human tissue and provides opportunities for ex vivo therapeutic testing.

The group is also translating molecular discoveries into new diagnostic technologies. This includes development of long-read telomere sequencing for assessment of telomere length and critically short telomeres in pulmonary fibrosis and other lung diseases, with the goal of establishing clinically useful testing for patients in whom telomere dysfunction may influence diagnosis, prognosis or treatment.

A further program is developing Particles in Exhaled Air (PExA) as a minimally invasive means of sampling the distal lung. By combining PExA with proteomic and lipidomic technologies, the group aims to develop biomarkers of lung ageing, silicosis, interstitial lung disease and transplantation, and ultimately to provide methods for monitoring disease and treatment response without invasive bronchoscopy.

Simon’s translational research also extends to chronic respiratory infection and antibody-mediated disease. He is part of an NHMRC Ideas-funded program investigating “cloaking antibodies” in Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection — harmful antibody responses that can interfere with protective immunity and promote persistence of infection. The work aims to identify the B-cell populations and immune mechanisms responsible and to develop strategies that selectively remove or modify harmful antibody responses while preserving protective immunity. This represents a potential new therapeutic approach for chronic Pseudomonas infection in diseases such as cystic fibrosis and bronchiectasis.

Across these programs, the common strategy is to combine access to unique human lung samples with advanced molecular technologies and functional experimentation, then move promising findings toward new treatments, clinically useful biomarkers and diagnostic tests.