Meet the research leader in cystic fibrosis
Associate Professor David Parsons BSc PhD
Associate Professor David Parsons is the leader of the Cystic Fibrosis Stream at the Children's Research Centre and Chief Medical Scientist in the Department of Pulmonary Medicine at the Women's and Children's Hospital. He is also co-Head of the Adelaide Cystic Fibrosis Gene Therapy Group in the Centre for Stem Cell Research at the Robinson Institute, and an Affiliate Senior Lecturer in the Discipline of Paediatrics at the University of Adelaide.
Associate Professor David Parsons has devoted the past 15 years to finding a cure for Cystic Fibrosis (CF) and has twice-won Service Excellence Awards administered by the Children, Youth and Women's Health Service for his innovations in this field. He and his research team have pioneered a ground-breaking gene therapy technique that has been successful in reversing the basic cellular defect that causes CF in mouse models, and that holds promise as a long-lasting treatment for CF lung disease.
In addition, Associate Professor David Parsons is simultaneously conducting leading-edge research into the surface behaviour of inhaled pollutant particles on live airway passages using synchrotron X-ray technology in Japan, and more recently at the Australian Synchrotron. By monitoring microscopic particles that were previously considered too small to view in living airways, David hopes to pioneer new and more effective ways of measuring the success of respiratory treatment in CF patients. He conducts his research with colleagues at the Women's and Children's Hospital in Adelaide, Monash University in Melbourne and the SPring-8 Synchrotron in Japan.
