Wal-yan Respiratory Research Centre secures Telethon funding for three new research projects

Wal-yan Respiratory Research Centre secures Telethon funding for three new research projects Researchers from the Wal-yan Respiratory Research Centre – a powerhouse partnership between The Kids Research Institute Australia, Perth Children’s Hospital Foundation and Perth Children’s Hospital – have received funding from the Channel 7 Telethon Trust for three new research projects. Each project is focused on improving health outcomes for some of Western Australia’s most vulnerable children.

Restoring preterm rhythms: generating evidence to change practice – Led by Dr Jane Choi

Premature babies spend their earliest days in hospital nurseries where the lights stay on around the clock, meaning they miss out on the natural day-night cues that help set their body clock. This disruption to circadian rhythms (the internal 24-hour cycle that governs sleep, growth, and immune function) comes at one of the most critical windows in a baby’s development, and is increasingly linked to long-term problems including breathing difficulties, weakened immunity, and delays in brain development.

Restoring these natural rhythms offers a promising and practical opportunity to improve health outcomes through simple environmental changes. This project will investigate whether bringing light-dark cycles back to premature babies by using eye masks and earplugs as part of a cycled light intervention can support the development of healthy circadian rhythms and improve immune and lung health at a cellular level.

Researchers will draw on a unique collection of neonatal blood and airway samples from WA babies enrolled in the CIRCA DIEM Trial. The samples will be used to generate the primary evidence needed to understand how a baby’s body clock influences their clinical outcomes and potentially change standard care for premature infants.

It’s about TIME!: better outcomes after antenatal steroids – Led by Professor Jane Pillow

Steroid injections given to mothers before a premature birth are one of the most effective tools in neonatal medicine. They help the baby’s lungs develop quickly and can mean the difference between life and death. But these steroids may also carry unintended risks, including effects on brain development, the immune system, and long-term health of their babies.

This project explores a potentially simple solution: timing. Just as our bodies follow natural daily rhythms that govern sleep, hormones, and cell activity (known as circadian rhythms), the way a baby responds to steroids may depend on when during the day they are given. Aligning treatment timing with these biological rhythms could preserve the life-saving respiratory benefits while reducing the risk of longer-term harm.

The project will provide clinicians with evidence about how the timing of steroid treatment affects the baby’s brain, lungs, immune system, and stress-response hormones. The team hope to give doctors straightforward, easily translatable insights to improve the efficacy and safety of antenatal steroids for fetal lung maturation.

Identifying treatable asthma traits using WA twins – Led by Dr Jonatan Leffler 

Asthma affects around one in ten children under 14, making it one of the most common chronic conditions in childhood. Almost every serious flare-up is triggered by a respiratory viral infection. In WA alone, this accounts for more than 2,500 hospital admissions in children each year, with the heaviest burden falling on families from socially and economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

Despite this, there is still no cure or preventative treatment for asthma. Most therapies are reactive. They manage symptoms after they appear, rather than addressing the underlying immune dysfunction that makes some children so much more vulnerable to viruses than others. Part of the problem is that we still don’t fully understand what causes asthma in the first place.

This project will tackle that gap by studying a unique WA cohort of twins, where one twin has asthma and the other doesn’t. By comparing how their immune systems respond to viral infections, and using newly developed laboratory models, researchers can isolate the biological differences that drive susceptibility. The goal is to identify new targets for treatment that could restore virus resilience in children with asthma, particularly those who currently have the fewest options.

The Wal-yan Respiratory Research Centre thanks the Channel 7 Telethon Trust for supporting this work. Each of these projects addresses a critical gap in children's respiratory research. This funding makes it possible to generate evidence, and to turn it into real changes for WA kids.