Jodie Simpson

Biography

Jodie Simpson is a senior research fellow in The University of Newcastle’s Priority Research Centre for Asthma and Respiratory Disease and the current holder of the Australian Respiratory Council’s Ann Woolcock Research Fellowship. Her research focuses on the inflammatory biomarkers of airways disease and she has a particular interest in innate immune pathways and their role in airways disease. She has developed several important assays for the assessment of inflammatory mediators in airway secretions and continues to work on assessment of novel markers of airway inflammation. In 2005, Jodie completed her PhD where she identified and characterised four inflammatory phenotypes in asthma based on the presence of absence of increased sputum eosinophil and neutrophil proportions. This work has led to further investigations of asthma inflammatory phenotypes using gene expression profiling and recently the identification of novel biomarkers for asthma and COPD. Dr Simpson designed and conducted the first RCT of macrolide antibiotics in severe refractory asthma, this research was pivotal in her success with a large NHMRC project grant awarded in 2008 to investigate macrolide antibiotic therapy in asthma as a multi-centre RCT (The AMAZES study). In her earlier work, Dr Simpson demonstrated that macrolide antibiotics are an effective anti-inflammatory therapy in non-eosinophilic refractory asthma. She is currently working on the AMAZES study collaborating with centres around Australia and working on 2 sub-studies, the first looking at macrophage phagocytosis and the second investigating airway and systemic inflammation in asthma subtypes. Jodie has actively presented her work at national and international scientific meetings and has authored over 50 papers in peer reviewed journals. She is an active participant in research service and teaching as representative on TSANZ research subcommittee and the supervisor of 4 research higher degree students.

Research Interest

Respiratory Diseases