Are you a researcher thinking about applying for one of our career support and travel grants?
Hear from one of our latest recipients, Dr Yuan Gao about her experience attending the 20th Immunology of Diabetes Society (IDS) Congress in Bruges, Belgium, and then visiting Associate Professor Tommi Vatanen’s lab in Helsinki.
Dr Gao is part of the Breakthrough T1D-funded Environmental Determinants of Islet Autoimmunity (ENDIA) study. ENDIA is a world-leading longitudinal study that follows 1,500 children in their first 10 years of life, form as early as pregnancy, to track the environmental conditions that contribute to islet autoimmunity, a hallmark of type 1 diabetes (T1D) development. Dr Gao’s work is looking at the maternal and infant gut microbiome in pregnancy and early life and their role in the development of T1D.
Read more to our career support and travel grants or find out more, including funding amounts and eligibility criteria.
For more funding opportunities for T1D researchers, head to our ‘For researchers‘ page.
Learn about Dr Gao's experience
Tell us a bit about yourself and your area of research.
I am currently a T1D researcher at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI) in Melbourne.
I am a bioinformatician specialising in metagenomics, within the ENDIA pregnancy-birth cohort study. I have been investigating the role of the maternal gut microbiome during pregnancy and the infant gut microbiome in early life, and their functions in the development of islet autoimmunity in childhood.
We hope that by characterising these microbiomes, we may be able to prevent islet autoimmunity in infants at high risk of developing the condition.
What prompted you to apply for the Breakthrough T1D-funded career support and travel grant?
As an early postdoc, I felt that attending the 20th IDS Congress in Bruges would be a wonderful opportunity for me to better understand the immunology of T1D, in the context of my research.
The IDS would be my first T1D meeting, nationally or internationally, and I would have the opportunity to introduce myself to leaders in the field and get their feedback on my research. This would provide potential opportunities for collaboration with people from different backgrounds.
Right after the conference, I visited the Vatanen lab at the University of Helsinki. A/ Prof Vatanen has previously led several major infant gut microbiome investigations in T1D and beyond. His expertise in metagenomic analysis, would support comprehensive and innovative utilisation of the gut metagenomes generated in the ENDIA study. In fact, we aim to investigate the contribution not only of mother, but father and sibling microbial transmission to offspring in collaboration with the Vatanen lab.
Hence, I was truly grateful to be the recipient of a Breakthrough T1D funded travel award, allowing me to share my results at IDS, as well as visiting the Vatanen lab at the University of Helsinki in Finland.
More about Dr Gao's experience
What did you do and what was your experience like?
Attending the IDS conference was a wonderful opportunity for me to better understand the immunology of T1D, as I am relatively new to the field.
I had inspiring discussions on my poster and others’ posters, especially with Holly Roach. Holly is a PhD student supervised by Professor John A. Todd from University of Oxford, and they have been working on the host-microbiome interactions in T1D pathology. The discussion with them and presentations at the IDS congress have greatly piqued my interest in T1D research.
The visit to the Vatanen lab has improved my skills in metagenomic data processing and tracking of microorganism transmission (i.e. bacterial strains and mobile genetic elements, and bacteriophages).
These skills have greatly helped me to conduct my research.
What is the best thing about being able to travel internationally and its connection to your research?
The IDS Congress has provided me a clear overall picture of T1D research currently being undertaken around the world, which helped me to understand where my particular work fits in.
During my visit to the Vatanen Lab, I learnt about the cutting-edge technology they are using, deepening my bioinformatic expertise and bringing these skills back to the ENDIA team here in Australia.
Both of these things will allow me to turn basic science findings into practical interventions such as prebiotics, probiotics, and bacterial transplants to one day prevent and manage T1D.
