The American Australian Association has announced at its 2024 Benefit Dinner a new initiative to foster collaboration between Australian and US health researchers.
The exchange between researchers based at Murdoch Children's Research Institute (MCRI) and Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco will support researchers to develop and share new technologies and techniques to accelerate life-saving therapies for children affected by heart disease.
Guests heard about how this new collaboration between MCRI and Gladstone Institutes, will bring the full might of stem cell medicine, genomics, big data and AI to bear on childhood heart disease. Globally, 260,000 children die from heart disease every year. In the US, 40,000 babies are born with a heart defect annually, or one child every 15 minutes.
Professor Enzo Porrello, MCRI Director of Stem Cell Medicine, said; "This exciting new collaboration with Gladstone, supported by the American Australian Association funding, will make a real difference to children and their families.
Image: Professor Enzo Porrello
"Through our close clinical collaborators, I often meet families like Ebony Mallinson's, whose children Amelia and Eli were both born with heart disease and who now face an uncertain future. The work we are doing right now has the potential to identify the root causes of heart disease in children like Amelia and Eli, with a view to developing new precision treatments that could eliminate the need for heart transplants."
Gladstone Institutes President Deepak Srivastava said; "We're proud to collaborate with the team at MCRI and combine our expertise in stem cell biology and cardiac research to help children with heart conditions. This type of initiative perfectly aligns with our goal at Gladstone of using science to overcome disease."
Image: Gladstone Institutes stem cell scientist Shinya Yamanaka in his research lab.
MCRI Global Ambassador Sarah Murdoch said, "I am so proud to have played a part in my family's longstanding connection to the Murdoch Children's Research Institute, named in honour of Lachlan's grandmother, Dame Elisabeth, who founded the institute in 1986.
"Enzo and his team really pioneered the field when in 2017 they created the most complex 3D miniaturised models of human heart tissue in the world. They now create thousands of these beating heart tissues that accurately mimic the human heart in a dish every week, in order to perform these huge experiments at a scale not previously imagined.
"With this announcement, MCRI continues to expand its world-leading research into the biggest child health problems of our time, with heart disease being one of the most lethal."
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About Murdoch Children's Research Institute
Murdoch Children's Research Institute is the largest child health research institute in Australia, committed to making discoveries and developing treatments to improve child and adolescent health in Australia and around the world. Top three in the world for research quality, MCRI pioneers new treatments, trials better vaccines and improves ways of diagnosing and helping sick babies, children and adolescents. It is one of the only research institutes in Australia to offer genetic testing to find answers for families of children with previously undiagnosed conditions.
About Gladstone Institutes
Gladstone Institutes is an independent, nonprofit biomedical research organization in San Francisco that uses visionary science and technology to overcome disease. Established in 1979, it is a global leader in cardiovascular research and stem cell technology, and a pioneer in open-source machine learning models that provide novel insights into the underlying biology of diseases, particularly developmental disorders of the heart and brain.
