Dr Ryan O'Hare Doig

In 2017, Dr. Ryan O'Hare Doig completed his PhD in Neuroscience and Physiology at the University of Western Australia. During his PhD, Ryan developed and optimised a combinatorial treatment strategy incorporating pharmacotherapeutics for the treatment of Central Nervous System (CNS) injury. Ryan’s combinatorial strategy has been assessed in a clinically relevant model of spinal cord injury (SCI), traumatic brain injury and concussion, demonstrating significant functional recovery and tissue sparing, crucial for the translation of his research into clinical trials. He has a wealth of experience in various innovative and analytical techniques to demonstrate biochemical, molecular and gross anatomical changes that occur following CNS injury. Ryan 's early research career has focused on understanding the pathophysiology of secondary degeneration following neurotrauma to the CNS with a particular focus on spinal cord injury (SCI).

In 2017, Ryan joined the South Australian Health & Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI) and the Neil Sachse Centre for Spinal Cord Research, to provide his expertise in SCI, which he now leads as the acting non-executive Director, and head of the SCI Research Lab Group. Since joining SAHMRI, Ryan has developed a research programme with three distinct themes: Discovery, diagnostics and therapeutics. These themes involve several large-scale projects, all of which have attracted substantial additional external funding (e.g. AOSpine, Neurosurgical Research Foundation, Lifetime Support Authority, SpinalCure) and internal funding University of Adelaide and SAHMRI (~$5.63m as CI, ~$3.87m as AI), respectively, across 12 competitive grants. This has led to the development of several pre-clinical research studies in small and large animal models, the approval of two world-first early phase clinical trials (ACTRN1262200073374 & ACTRN12618001946202), and the establishment of South Australia's only pre-clinical stem cell tissue engineering platform (with Adelaide Medical School, School of Biomedicine, School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, and School of Chemical Engineering and Advanced Materials) actively seeking a cure for SCI.