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Dr Maria Sukkar

Lecturer, Pharmacy Practice
Member of the Respiratory Research Group

Qualifications

B.Pharm (Hons.), PhD

Contact Details

University of Sydney
Phone: +61 2 9036 7647
Fax: +61 2 9351 4391
Email:
Room S303
Pharmacy Building A15
The University of Sydney
NSW 2006 Australia

Background

Dr Sukkar graduated with a First Class Honours degree in Pharmacy and received an Australian Postgraduate Award to complete her doctoral studies. She was subsequently appointed on a Programme Grant funded by the Wellcome Trust in Professor Chung’s laboratory at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London. The NHLI is an internationally recognized centre of excellence in respiratory science; it is the largest department of respiratory research in Europe and amongst the largest three in the world. Dr Sukkar was awarded a Wellcome Trust Value in People Award which funded the final 10 months of her post-doctoral research at the NHLI. Dr Sukkar returned to Australia in November 2007 following this extensive period of post-doctoral research in the UK.

Research Interests

Dr Maria Sukkar has been instrumental in progressing knowledge of airway smooth muscle (ASM) function in chronic inflammatory airway diseases such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Dr Sukkar’s international standing in this field is evidenced by her extensive post-doctoral studies at Imperial College London where she spent six years at the National Heart & Lung Institute funded by a Wellcome Trust Programme Grant. In November 2007 Dr Sukkar returned to Sydney, where she lectures in Pharmacy Practice.

Asthma and COPD are chronic inflammatory diseases of the lungs characterized by persistent airway inflammation, structural remodeling of the airway wall and airflow obstruction. Historically, it was thought that abnormalities in the contractile properties of ASM were the primary cause of excessive airway narrowing in asthma. However, research over the past 10-15 years has revealed the extensive capacity to which ASM cells contribute to the inflammatory process, not only by releasing inflammatory mediators but also by directly interacting with inflammatory cells and initiating ‘immune responses’ that may further propagate the inflammatory process in the airways. In asthma and COPD, ASM cells also acquire the capacity to proliferate and migrate, leading to increased muscle bulk and thickening of the airway wall which is an important factor contributing to airflow limitation.

Oxidative stress plays a central role in the pathophysiology of asthma and COPD. Elevated levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) are detected in the airways and systemic circulation, while at the same time, there is reduced anti-oxidant protection due to impaired regulation or deficiencies of anti-oxidant enzymes. Dr Sukkar’s current research is focused on determining whether changes in the oxidant/anti-oxidant balance at the level of ASM drives the process of inflammation and remodeling in these cells. Specifically, Dr Sukkar is investigating whether activation of certain receptors expressed on ASM cells, known as toll-like receptors (TLRs), lead to oxidant-dependent inflammation and remodeling. TLRs are the major receptors that activate immune and inflammatory responses to protect the host against infectious (eg respiratory viral and bacterial infections) and non-infectious (eg environmental pollutants such as diesel exhaust particles and ozone) tissue injury and inflammation. This research is therefore likely to uncover new mechanisms that will allow us to understand how respiratory infections and environmental pollutants contribute to the development and exacerbation of chronic airways disease.

Metrics

Since 2000, Dr Sukkar has published 22 peer reviewed journal articles and 3 book chapters. Her work has been cited > 265 times and her h-index is 11. She has attracted $100K in research funding in her first year at the University of Sydney. Dr Sukkar has been invited to present her work and chair sessions at the Young Investigators’ International Symposia on Airway Smooth Muscle since 2002, and was invited to co-author a review arising from the meeting held in Sydney in Nov 2007. She was an invited participant at the European Respiratory Society symposium on airway smooth muscle held in Sweden in 2004 and the Transatlantic Airway Conference held in Switzerland in 2007. In 2008, Dr Sukkar chaired an oral session at the TSANZ national conference and was invited to give a research seminar at Johnson and Johnson, Pty Ltd. Dr Sukkar is a reviewer for several international journals including Pulm Pharmacol Ther, Int Arch Allergy Immunol and Eur J Pharmacol.

Select Journal Articles

  1. Sukkar MB, Hughes JM, Johnson PRA, Armour CL (2000). GM-CSF production from human airway smooth muscle cells is potentiated by human serum. Med Inflamm 9: 161-168.
  2. Sukkar MB, Hughes JM, Armour CL, Johnson PRA (2001). TNF- potentiates contraction of human bronchus in vitro. Respirology 6: 199-203.
  3. Sukkar MB, Issa R, Xie S, Oltmanns U, Newton R, Chung KF (2004). Fractalkine/CX3CL1 production by human airway smooth muscle cells: induction by IFN- and TNF- and regulation by TGF- and corticosteroids. Am J Physiol 287: L1230-40.
  4. Sukkar MB, Stanley AJ, Blake AE, Hodgkin PD, Johnson PR, Armour CL, Hughes JM (2004). 'Proliferative' and 'synthetic' airway smooth muscle cells are overlapping populations. Immunol Cell Biol 82: 471-8.
  5. Xie S, Sukkar MB, Issa R, Oltmanns U, Nicholson AG, Chung KF (2005). Regulation of TGF- induced connective tissue growth factor (CTGF) expression in airway smooth muscle cells. Am J Physiol 288: L68-76.
  6. Oltmanns U, Sukkar MB, Xie S, John M, Chung KF (2005). Induction of human airway smooth muscle apoptosis by neutrophils and neutrophil elastase. Am J Respir Cell Mol Biol, 32: 334-341.
  7. Issa R, Xie S, Lee KY, Stanbridge RD, Bhavsar P, Sukkar MB, Chung KF (2006). GRO- regulation in airway smooth muscle by IL-1 and TNF-: role of NF-B and MAP kinases. Am J Physiol 291:L66-74.
  8. Catley MC, Sukkar MB, Chung KF, Jaffee B, Liao S, Coyle AJ, Haddad E, Barnes PJ, Newton R (2006). Validation of the anti-inflammatory properties of small molecule IKK2 inhibitors by comparison to adenoviral-mediated delivery of dominant negative IKK1 and IKK2 in human airways smooth muscle. Mol Pharmacol, 70:697-705.
  9. Sukkar MB, Xie S, Khorasani NM, Kon OM, Stanbridge R, Issa R, Chung KF (2006). Toll-like receptor 2, 3 and 4 expression and function in human airway smooth muscle. J Allergy Clin Immunol 118:641-8.
  10. Bhavsar PK, Sukkar MB, Khorasani N, Lee KY, Chung KF (2008). Glucocorticoid suppresion of CX3CL1 (fractalkine) by reduced gene promoter recruitment of NF-κB. FASEB J 22:1807-16.