NEXT WEEK'S SPEAKER

Professor Clive May was brought to The Florey by the founding Director, Professor Derek Denton. At The Florey, he founded the Preclinical Critical Care Unit, a world-leading, sophisticated experimental operative and critical care unit. This unit creates and supports clinically relevant large animal models of disease that enable exploration of the changes in organ function that occur in critical illness. In addition, these studies provide the opportunity to develop new drugs, biomarkers and devices for testing in critically ill patients. Such experimental studies are vitally important due to the difficulty of researching critically ill patients.
Current research is focused on the causes and treatment of damage to vital organs in septic shock, heart failure, cardiopulmonary bypass and myocardial infarction. In addition, Professor May has developed numerous clinical collaborations that have enhanced the translation of his findings to the clinic. This was recognised in 2022 by the Translation Award from the Australian Cardiovascular Alliance.
Outcomes include the research that led to the development of the first new drug to treat septic shock for 20 years, which has saved many lives, a new biomarker for the detection of acute kidney injury, the Stentrode, a novel brain-machine interface that has been implanted in four patients with motor neurone disease, and demonstration that megadose sodium ascorbate reverses the effects of sepsis. This major clinical problem accounts for 20% of world deaths. Based on his research, several clinical trials on sepsis and cardiopulmonary bypass are underway in Melbourne hospitals.
Clive has been continuously funded by NHMRC since 2003 and has received grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), USA, and the National Heart Foundation of Australia.