Ms Linda Truong

Research Profile

Linda Truong is an Australian neuropharmacologist and research neurology clinical trials specialist in academia, public health hospitals, and global industry, attesting to the quality of her research ideas and the ability to prosecute international clinical trials over the past two decades. Linda was appointed clinical trial manager (2016), clinical trials researcher (2020), and then senior clinical trial manager (2022), at NSW Health and a NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence (CRE), and now Executive Director (Strategic Partnerships) at HAIKDA Research (2023). Linda has successfully collaborated extensively with both Australian and international clinical researchers and industry partners, addressing critical scientific inquiries related to clinical trial design, cannabis-based therapies, neurological disorders such as epilepsy, and innovative methodologies for co-designing clinical trials in neurodegenerative diseases alongside patient and consumer groups. As a national leader in clinical trials, her research has directly influenced clinical practice by providing the evidence base to understand the use of new epilepsy medications in four large paediatric hospitals in NSW, clarifying the safety and efficacy data of the new drug on seizures and facilitating the approval of new medicines for approval by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).

Linda has brought together and worked with clinical leaders, senior neuroscientists, clinical pharmacologists, and NSW health allied health professionals and developed the resources/infrastructure needed to address fundamental questions of importance to a group of epilepsy disorders of major health significance. These have revealed details of prescribing guidelines, transition pathways, new models of care, and informed clinical trial method modelling for therapeutic development and drug delivery for rare diseases. To facilitate further research discovery, Linda has made these resources and knowledge available to Australian researchers for further transformative research studies in her role on independent ethics, scientific and data monitoring committees (2018).

Research Grants

Linda has been awarded a ~$800,000 research grant and scholarship to support her research in Newcastle, Australia, and is one of the principal investigators on a research project to co-design new methodologies for the design of clinical trials with the participation of rare disease patient consumer groups. In clinical trials, registered drugs are tested in children and adults in NSW and have formed the basis for the first patient-centred clinical trial for epilepsy, with recent work targeting cannabis-based medicines. 

Research Interest

Linda serves as a passionate advocate for neurological spinal cord injury (2019) and works with numerous patient consumer groups for rare disease to incorporate the patient voice in the promotion of national patient-centred clinical trials for rare epilepsy, awareness of epilepsy, and improved symptomatology with new repurposed drugs.  She leads a large research team that uses clinical, patient-derived, and clinical methodologies to advance knowledge of epilepsy and clinical trials operations. Her vision is to continue to develop significant research capacity in rare epilepsy diseases on both seizure and non-seizure symptoms, and to coalesce Australian clinical research and patient capacity in these areas so that significant medical advances can be made with drug reimbursements for improved patient access.

Qualifications

Linda recently completed the Harvard Medical School Pharmacology: Clinical Drug Development and Discovery program, graduating within the top 10% of the cohort. This advanced training provided a comprehensive grounding in the scientific, regulatory, and translational aspects of modern drug development, encompassing preclinical pharmacology, clinical trial methodology, regulatory science, and emerging therapeutic modalities. Her performance in the program reflects a strong command of contemporary pharmacological principles and their application to rigorous, patient-centred clinical trials and research.