Dr Ama-Tawiah Essilfie

Research Officer

Lung Inflammation and Infection

Investigating the role of iron and respiratory pathogens in chronic airway disease

About

After the completion of my undergraduate degree at the University of Newcastle (NSW), I became interested in the respiratory system and how infections affect the progression and severity of disease. I completed my PhD and first post-doc in Immunology and Microbiology also at the University of Newcastle, investigating the role of Haemophilus influenzae respiratory infection in severe asthma.

I moved to Brisbane in 2016 and joined the Lung Inflammation and Infection laboratory at QIMR Berghofer. Our focus is to understand the role of iron in chronic airway inflammation and how infections and the microbiome contribute to health and disease. We aim to improve the quality of life for cystic fibrosis (CF) and other chronic airway disease patients, through novel and personalised therapy. Our team has made major contributions demonstrating how iron, its regulation and metabolism drive disease features in CF and asthma, and we hope to expand this to other diseases.

Area of Interest

My current research interests involve iron and the role it plays in chronic airway diseases such as CF, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma.

I am also interested in respiratory infections and how they exacerbate and potentially predispose to more severe chronic disease.

I aim to investigate the contribution of the microbiome to CF and how this is affected by nutritional iron and different inflammatory processes.