Associate Professor Cecilia Prele

Principal Investigator
BSc (Hons), PhD

Associate Professor Cecilia Prêle is a Principal Investigator and Head of the Tissue Repair and Fibrosis Group at the Institute for Respiratory Health, UWA. She also holds the position of Associate Professor in Pathology at Murdoch University. A/Prof Prêle completed her PhD at University College London in the UK and, following a postdoctoral position at Guy’s and St Thomas’s Hospital and King’s College London, she moved to Perth in 2002. For the past 20 years, her research has focused on understanding the body’s response to damage, specifically on inflammation and the development of fibrosis and the mechanisms responsible for regulating tissue repair following injury. Her research team, together with their collaborators, have worked to better understand the cell-mediated and molecular drivers of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). They have identified some of the signal transduction pathways that influence how cells within the lung behave. Recently, they have shown that immune cells play a role in shaping the local lung environment in IPF, providing the cues and signals that may be responsible for the excessive fibrosis. They are currently investigating the potential benefit of immunotherapy approaches in lung fibrosis.

Throughout her career, Associate Professor Prêle has held several leadership positions including; Staff-elected Board Member for the Institute for Respiratory Health, Steering Committee for the Australian Rare Lung Disease Short Course, Leadership Committee for the International Colloquium on Lung and Airway Fibrosis, Executive committee for the UWA-Helmholtz Zentrum Munich-University College London Research Network and Board of Directors for Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand. A/Prof Prele is a Deputy Editor for Respirology and Associate Editor for Frontiers in Pharmacology; Respiratory Pharmacology.