Dr Claudia Nold

Biography

Dr Claudia Nold is a pharmacist by training with broad expertise in cytokine biology, inflammation and immunology. After her graduation from pharmacy school in 2000, she was awarded a competitive three-year PhD Fellowship by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (the German NHMRC equivalent) and started her PhD at the Pharmazentrum Frankfurt, Germany. This fellowship 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, who first described the function of Interleukin 1.

Research Interest

Some of her achievements of this productive time included the description of anti-viral, endothelial and angiogenic properties of interleukin (IL-)32, and the important paper on the functional differences between monocytes and macrophages (200+ citations). In 2009, Dr Nold was recruited to The Ritchie Centre at Hudson Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, and continued to publish at a very high level, revealing the powerful anti-inflammatory properties of IL-37. In 2011 she was awarded the Christina Fleischmann Award of the International Society of Interferon and Cytokine Research. This award recognizes young female investigators for notable contributions to basic or clinical research. The second achievement exemplifies the translational trajectory that is paramount to her laboratory: her team has almost completed the bedside-to-bench-and-back circuit with their work on interleukin 1 receptor antagonist (IL-1Ra) in bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD). There is an urgent medical need to find the first safe and effective treatment for BPD in the neonatal intensive care unit, and the Nold laboratory showed in a mouse model that IL-1Ra prevents the disease. The team is now planning a clinical trial to prove the concept in babies. Because of these innovative programs, the Nold team has been awarded substantial grant funding and an international patent, and are collaborating with partners in the pharmaceutical industry.