Professor Damien Keating

I am a Matthew Flinders Professor in the Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute (FHMRI) and Head of the Gut Sensory Systems research group. I undertook a post-doc with Prof. Thomas Jentsch at the ZMNH, Hamburg, Germany and was then awarded an independent research fellowship to move to the Hudson Institute in Melbourne. I was recruited to Flinders University through a BioInnovation SA Research Fellowship and was subsequently awarded a NHMRC Career Development Fellowship (Level 1), ARC Future Fellowship and  NHMRC Career Development Fellowship (Level 2) as well as project grant funding from ARC, NHMRC and industry sources. My total grant funding exceeds $15 million as lead investigator.

My research is focused on understanding how cells send chemical signals to each other and how this is implicated in health and disease. I have a particular focus on sensory cells lining the gut wall called enteroendocrine cells, how they monitor and respond to changes in the gut environment including ingested food, fluids and drugs, as well as the gut microbiome.

The health implicaitons of our work are diverse and include:

• metabolic disorders such as  diabetes and obesity,
• gut motility disorders such as constipation,
• the control of higher brain function and mental health via activation of the gut brain axis.
• In addition, we have made significant contributions on how the gut microbiome interacts with enteroendocrine cells to affect host physiology. 

We utilise cutting edge approaches in our research and aim to provide a fun, open and accepting research environment for all group members.

We have published significant work in this area in leading international journals including Nature, PNAS, PLoS Genetics, Molecular Psychiatry, Gastroenterology, Human Molecular Genetics, Journal of Neuroscience, Diabetes, Nature Communications and Cell Metabolism.

My lab webpage: https://www.flinders.edu.au/fhmri/research/gut-sensory-systems

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=tKRt6GUAAAAJ&hl=en

ORCID ID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0154-8305