The Australian Gastrointestinal Research Alliance (AGIRA), led by Laureate Professor Nick Talley and Professors Marjorie Walker (Newcastle) and Gerald Holtmann (Brisbane) is a coalition of researchers in gastrointestinal (GI) disease who have expertise in clinical medicine and gastroenterology, mucosal immunology, translational science, pathology, imaging, psychology, and epidemiology in aspects of GI disease in Australia.

Australian Gastrointestinal Research Alliance

Current research focuses on the cause and treatment of inflammatory luminal gut disease. These include functional bowel disorders particularly  dyspepsia, IBS and also paediatric abdominal pain syndromes - developing biomarkers, unravelling pathologies, assessing psychological factors and thebrain gut-axis, the role of infection and the microbiome, inflammatory bowel disease (predominantly the role of hypoxia and  epidemiology of IBD),  gastro-oesophageal reflux disease, oesophageal pre-cancer and cancer, eosinophilic oesophagitis and eosinophilic GI disease, coeliac disease and faecal transplantation in treatment of gut disorders. 

  • In Australia the founding groups of AGIRA are based at Newcastle (University of Newcastle, HMRI, John Hunter Hospital and General Practice), Brisbane (Princess Alexandra Hospital & TRI) and Sydney (Macquarie University, UNSW, and University of Sydney). We are always interested in establishing links with other GI research groups domestically and internationally.
  • We have international collaborations with other researchers in the USA, UK, Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland, Finland, Brazil, Chile, Singapore and China.

The aim of AGIRA is to pool the expertise, to secure grant funding for research projects, execute robust clinical research projects in basic science, and to recruit sufficient numbers of patients for rigorous clinical research and clinical trials.