ANU immunologist Associate Professor Katrina Randall gets ACT government research grant

It is probably due to the environment, Canberra Health Services immunologist and Australian National University Associate Professor Katrina Randall said.

"Canberra's the allergy capital," Dr Randall laughed.

"[Hay fever] is less about the genetics and more about the environment around Canberra, because we find that [when people] move away, often their symptoms get better."

Dr Randall has received a grant from an ACT government research fund to better diagnose and treat people with severe allergies and immune deficiencies.

"[We look at] blood cells to see if we can come up with a better [way] to work out who has an allergic tendency and who doesn't," she said.

Many people do not realise that severe hay fever can be treated, Dr Randall said.

While most patients are helped by antihistamines or nasal sprays, Dr Randall wants to help those "people that are still miserable".

"Things can be done about it, you don't have to live with it. We can actually make it better," she said.

Immunotherapy for people with grass pollen allergies takes three years and requires monthly transfusions or daily tablets.

Dr Randall's research hopes to help immunologists predict which patients will respond to treatment.

Researchers look at a marker in the blood to see if the treatment is making someone's immune system less reactive to the allergen.

"Immunotherapy is a bit of an imposition on your time and also financially," she said.

"At the moment, we basically base it on whether they feel better. Now we're trying to see if we can predict earlier on in the treatment who's going to have the best benefit."

Dr Randall also does research hoping to help people with a common type of immune deficiency by identifying which genetic defect is causing their problem.

Patients with common variable immunodeficiency are born with a defect which "knocks out just one part of your immune system", Dr Randall said.

"So you can have issues with just one particular bug and be fine for everything else," she said.

"We can kind of look at which part of the immune system isn't working and then for some people even give them a more targeted treatment."

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People with antibody deficiencies require treatment for the rest of their life. This can be weekly self-infections or monthly transfusions in hospital.

"When their antibody levels are low, we can replace those antibodies with a product that comes from [donated] blood," Dr Randall said.

"We want to be looking at some more targeted treatment because we don't want to wipe out all their immune system."

Dr Randall will conduct research for the university and Canberra Health Services.

Four other early and mid-career ACT researchers received funding from the government through the 2022-23 research and innovation fund.

Palliative care clinic director Dr Michael Chapman; University of Canberra dementia researcher Dr Nathan D'Cunha; haematologist Dr Philip Choi and endometriosis nurse Melissa Parker shared in the nearly $1 million grant money.

The funds helps to allow Canberra to develop a strong research community, executive for research at ACT Health, Dr Jade Redfern, said.

"The successful applicants are a diverse mix of clinician researchers, nurses and allied health professionals," she said.

"It's important to us that not only are we building the capacity of our research community, but we're also providing research that is relevant to our local area, and impacts our health system here."

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