Paul Harpur wears many hats.

He’s a lawyer, a company director, a former Fulbright Scholar, a Paralympian and an Associate Professor at The University of Queensland Law School.

He is also blind and is passionate about disability inclusion.

“Nearly 1 in 5 Australians have some form of disability,” Dr Harpur said.

“Disability inclusion strategies at higher education institutions could play a key role in promoting inclusion for these nearly four million people.”

Dr Harpur, who lost his vision after a train accident at the age of 14, is now in the perfect position to effect change.

He chairs the UQ Disability Inclusion Group and his Fulbright Scholarship allowed him to research disability inclusion at the Harvard Law School.

“I dream of a world where it is no longer about ‘them and us’, instead we talk about just ‘us’,” he said.

As UQ celebrates inclusion and student belonging as part of Teaching and Learning Week 2021, Dr Harpur said he believed universities should be a model for the broader community for disability inclusion.

“Universities can become disability champions where there is institutional support on diversity and inclusion,” he said.

“At UQ, we have such support.

“Inclusion at the University is all about teamwork, and this is reflected in the industry and university level awards we receive.”

Dr Harpur said in the past five years there had been a steady increase in the number of undergraduate students with a disability studying at UQ.

The University’s Disability Action Plan 2020 Annual Report also showed a more than 41 per cent increase in students engaging with disability support services provided by the University.

“UQ is championing disability inclusion and striving to be the university of choice for persons with disabilities,” he said.

Dr Harpur was recently awarded an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellowship to investigate how the higher education sector can better support people with disabilities to transition from economic exclusion to work.

“This is a significant issue because just over 47 per cent of people with a disability are unemployed,” he said.

Considering Dr Harpur’s many achievements, it’s no surprise his hopes for the future are also ambitious.

“UQ is moving from being a disability confident organisation to becoming a disability courageous university,” he said.

“We are well on the way to realising this dream.

“K-12 schooling is producing great students with disabilities, UQ is welcoming them and leading the way in how they can be employed and succeed to fulfil their potential.”

Media: Associate Professor Paul Harpur, p.harpur@law.uq.edu.au, +61 (0)7 3365 8864, UQ Media and Communications, communications@uq.edu.au, +61 (0)429 056 139.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus does not infect blood vessels, despite the high risk of blood clots to COVID-19 patients, University of Queensland researchers have found.

Dr Emma Gordon and Dr Larisa Labzin from UQ’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience and Dr Kirsty Short from UQ’s School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences pooled their expertise in vascular biology and virology to determine how the virus causes damage to blood vessels.

The researchers found that the cardiovascular complications of COVID-19 are triggered by inflammation caused by infected airway cells.

“At least 40 per cent of patients that are hospitalised with COVID-19 are at high risk of blood clots, and anti-coagulation therapies are now being routinely used,” Dr Gordon said.

“There have been many studies attempting to prove whether the virus is infecting cells of the inner blood vessel wall or not.

“By conducting our experiments using real, infectious virus rather than fragments of the virus’s spike protein, we can definitively say it is not.”

The researchers used UQ’s sophisticated microscopy facilities to track where the virus travelled in the cells and visualise how blood vessels respond to the live virus.

Immunologist Dr Labzin said the body’s inflammatory response had a big effect on the cardiovascular system because they work together to fight infection – the blood delivers the immune cells to the site of infection and makes blood clots if the blood vessel is damaged.

“When our immune system works well, it clears the virus from our bodies,” Dr Labzin said.

“But sometimes it goes into overdrive and we get an overblown inflammatory response causing complications –in the case of COVID-19, this is often blood clots, when there shouldn’t be any.

“Knowing that it is inflammation causing these cardiovascular complications arising from COVID-19 rather than the virus itself will help us develop the right treatments, and a better understanding of how and why these complications arise.”

Heart Foundation interim CEO, Professor Garry Jennings said the study helps clarify a key debate about the relationship between the virus and the lining of the blood vessels.

“How the cells lining the blood vessels sense the virus and the damage to nearby cells is still not completely understood,” he said.

“There is more research to do, but this study is an important step in our understanding of the virus and which cells and mechanisms we should look at next.”

This research is published in Clinical and translational Immunology (http://doi.org/10.1002/cti2.1350).

This work was supported by a Future Leader Fellowship (104692) from the National Heart Foundation of Australia and the National Health and Medical Research Council.

Cell fitness has been identified as a way of predicting health outcomes in COVID patients, according to a University of Queensland study.

The study investigated a cellular fitness marker, known as hfwe-Lose, to identify sub-optimal cells in patients who had been hospitalised or died from COVID at the start of the pandemic.

UQ Diamantina Institute’s Dr Arutha Kulasinghe said researchers conducted post-mortem analysis on COVID-infected lung tissues and found that the cell fitness marker influenced a person’s immune response to infection.

“We found that patients with acute lung injury had higher levels of the biomarker in their lower respiratory tract and areas of cell death,” Dr Kulasinghe said.

“More importantly, we also found that the cell fitness marker outperformed conventional methods, such as age, inflammation and co-existing diseases, in predicting health outcomes, such as hospitalisation and death, in COVID patients.”

Assessing the level of risk in developing severe COVID infection is an important consideration in the management of the current pandemic.

Dr Kulasinghe said the study findings might be useful in the early triage of patients who test positive for COVID as the cell fitness marker could be identified via a simple nasal swab.

“The cell fitness marker would enable medical teams to identify patients more likely to develop severe symptoms, provide closer monitoring and earlier access to hospitalisation and intensive care,” he said.

“We are now looking to validate our findings in larger patient populations to determine the robustness of the marker.

“The cell fitness marker is part of the body’s process for removing unwanted cells.”

This study was conducted in partnership with the University of Copenhagen, and the paper is published in EMBO Molecular Medicine (DOI: 10.15252/emmm.202013714).

Media:  Dr Arutha Kulasinghe, arutha.kulasinghe@uq.edu.au; med.media@uq.edu.au,  +61 (0)7 3365 5118.

A commonly available pesticide has been associated with an increased risk of chronic kidney disease (CKD) in a University of Queensland study.

Researchers analysed links between pesticide exposure and the risk of kidney dysfunction in 41,847 people, using data from the USA National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES).

School of Public Health Associate Professor, Nicholas Osborne said the study found people exposed to higher amounts of the insecticide Malathion, known as Maldison in Australia, had 25 per cent higher risk of kidney dysfunction.

“Nearly one in 10 people in high income countries show signs of CKD, which is permanent kidney damage and loss of renal function,” Dr Osborne said.

Risk factors of developing CKD include age, hypertension and diabetes.

Dr Osborne said CKD with no known cause was rising in low-to-middle income countries such as India, Sri Lanka and Mesoamerica.

“Initially, it was suspected the condition was associated with agricultural workplaces through exposure to heat stress, dehydration, pesticide spraying, heavy metals and agrochemicals,” Dr Osborne said.

“However, environmental contamination, pesticide residues and herbal medicines potentially containing heavy metals may also be contributing to a CKD.”

The cause of increased CKD remains unknown, but spraying pesticides without personal protective equipment (PPE) and working with contaminated soil have been suggested as likely exposure pathways.

Dr Osborne said the UQ study was the first to provide evidence linking Malathion with risk of poor kidney health in humans.

“The findings suggest we should limit our exposure to pesticides, even in very small doses, as chronic exposure may lead to negative health outcomes,” Dr Osborne said.

“We will continue to investigate if other pesticides may be involved and are planning to collect data on Sri Lankan farmer behaviours to examine their level of exposure when using pesticides in the field.”

Malathion is licenced for use in agriculture, domestic and public recreation areas as part of mosquito and fruit fly eradication programs, and can also be found in some topical head lice treatments.

The study is published in International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (DOI: 10.3390/ijerph181910249).

Media: Associate Professor Nick Osborne, n.osborne@uq.edu.au or +61 7 3365 5178, or med.media@uq.edu.au or +61 7 3365 5118.

A new generation of cheap, sustainable and efficient solar cells is a step closer, thanks to scientists at The University of Queensland.

Researchers at UQ’s Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN) modified a nanomaterial to make solar cells as efficient as silicon-based cells, but without their high cost and complex manufacturing.

Professor Joe Shapter said the finding addressed an urgent need for alternative environmentally friendly energy sources capable of providing efficient and reliable energy production.

“Silicon-based solar cells remain the dominant first-generation product making up 90 per cent of the market, but demand was high for cells that could be manufactured without their high prices and complexity,” Professor Shapter said.

“Among the next-generation technologies, perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have attracted enormous attention because of their high efficiency and ease of fabrication.

“The technology has undergone unprecedented rapid development in recent years.

“But the new generation of solar cells still have some drawbacks such as poor long-term stability, lead toxicity and high material costs.”

Professor Shapter said his team studied a nanomaterial that showed great promise in overcoming some of the new cell’s drawbacks and used doping, a common method of modifying the new cell’s nanomaterial to enhance its electrical properties.

The researchers found that the efficiency and thermal stability of the doped cells significantly outperformed those that were not doped.

“The PSCs that had doped cells showed a remarkable solar conversion efficiency that exceeded 21 per cent,” Professor Shapter said.

Solar cell efficiency is the rate at which a solar panel transfers the sunlight into electricity, with the average silicon cell efficiency presently between 15 and 22 per cent.

“This gives us hope that solar energy can continue to develop and improve as one of the most effective renewable and sustainable energy technologies,” Professor Shapter said.

The research involved collaboration with Professor Mohammad Nazeeruddin from École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland.

Associate Professor Yun Wang from Griffith University contributed modelling to understand the interaction between doped cell layers and materials used in light absorption.

“Our results explain how doped cells can greatly improve the energy conversion efficiency and lifetime of solar cells observed from the AIBN experiments,” Dr Wang said.

Professor Shapter said the research was part of a global push towards advanced and sustainable solar cell technology.

“Our research contributes to intensive efforts to develop various types of solar cells with the aim of realising efficient, stable and low-cost replacements for present silicon-based technology.”

The research has been published in Cell Reports Physical Science (DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.3891059).

Media: UQ Communications, Erik de Wit, e.dewit@uq.edu.au, +61 (0)447 305 979.