http://purnima.com

Purnima Bhat is a Senior Research Fellow at the ANU Medical School. She is a practicing clinical Gastroenterologist with appointments at Canberra Hospital, and at Canberra Colorectal. Purnima obtained her medical degree at the University of Queensland and specialised in Gastroenterology and Liver Transplantation at the Austin Hospital, Melbourne. She received her PhD from the University of Melbourne for research on Hepatitis B Virus at the Burnet Institute.

Purnima's research interests focus on mucosal immunology in the gut. Her lab works in translational medicine with a view to the development of novel therapies for diseases such as cancer, inflammatory bowel disease, and viral hepatitis. Her laboratory has developed in vitro and animal models for the examining the gut immune system and applies these methods to investigate the behaviour of diseases in patients.

She has a translational lab that develops novel methods to reduce health care delivery costs in developing countries, such as novel point-of-care tests for hepatitis B infection.

Purnima serves on the Climate Change Committees for the World Gastroenterology Organisation and the Gastroenterology Society of Australasia.

Purnima is the Chair of the World Endoscopy Organisation African Outreach Committee which promotes gastroenterology teaching and research in Africa. WEO has now developed and supported several new centres including flagship endoscopy sites in Nairobi and Addis Ababa. https://www.worldendo.org/

MBBS, FRACP, PhD

Endoscopy in LMIC
HBV diagnosis and therapy in LMIC
Point-of-care tests for rapid diagnostics in medicine
Mucosal immunology
The Gut/Liver axis
Development of novel therapies for Hepatitis B Virus
Development of immunotherapy for GI cancers
Live imaging using in vitro and in vivo techniques