Author Archives: Suzie Graham

Orchestrating changes in heart disease

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Centenary’s Molecular Cardiology research group—Professor Chris Semsarian, Dr Richard Bagnall & Tatiana Tsoutsman (Missing: Rhian Shephard) with bioinformatician Dr William Ritchie

A study by Centenary scientists will help researchers find new approaches to diagnosing and treating a devastating genetic heart condition. The group looked at microRNAs, tiny fragments of genetic material that regulate genes.

They may be small, but microRNAs (miRNAs) pack a significant punch. The work that Centenary’s Molecular Cardiology research group—including post-doctoral fellow, Dr Richard Bagnall, Professor Chris Semsarian, Dr Tatiana Tsoutsman and Rhian Shephard in collaboration with bioinformatician Dr William Ritchie—has just published tracked changing patterns of microRNAs in heart cells from the inception of the disease condition until its end stages. Continue reading →

New laboratories help put Centenary research into practice

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Professor John Rasko, AO and Minister for Health and Medical Research, The Hon. Jillian Skinner, MP

Professor John Rasko, AO and Minister for Health and Medical Research, The Hon. Jillian Skinner, MP

Centenary is at the heart of Sydney’s new five-year plan for clinical research just launched by the NSW Minister for Health and Medical Research, Jillian Skinner.

“We applaud the SLHD for having the foresight to have a strategic approach to medical research, and look forward to an ever closer collaboration that will enrich our patients’ lives,” said Centenary’s Executive Director, Professor Mathew Vadas, AO.

The launch itself demonstrated the Institute’s pivotal role, because it also served as the opening for Royal Prince Alfred Hospital’s new Cell and Molecular Therapies Laboratories which will be run by Centenary’s head of Gene and Stem Cell Therapy, Professor John Rasko AO.

“With this milestone we open up new opportunities for treating patients who suffer from cancer, genetic and other diseases,” Professor Rasko says.

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Prize-winning talk

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Keynote speaker Professor Sir Marc Feldmann

Professor Sir Marc Feldmann, Chair of the Centenary Institute’s Scientific Advisory Board, is the keynote speaker at tonight’s Annual Meeting, which celebrates the strength of the Institute’s science.

He’ll discuss his prize-winning work understanding rheumatoid arthritis at the University of Oxford’s Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology.

Centenary researcher Professor Barbara Fazekas de St Groth will talk about her work on the ‘hygiene hypothesis’: the ecology of immuno-inflammatory disease. It’s the idea that we can be too clean and fail to train our immune system effectively.

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A meeting of the world’s best minds celebrates Centenary

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Annual Meeting

Centenary Institute Annual Meeting 2012

Eminent speakers, awards, expert researchers, the Governor of New South Wales – the Centenary Institute Annual Meeting truly is a celebration of everything we’ve achieved in the past 12 months.

It’s also the culmination of this week’s visit of our Scientific Advisory Board (SAB), an elite international group of scientists, who have spent three days assessing Centenary’s work and preparing a report that will help us set our course for the next year.

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Containment of multi-drug resistant TB in the Pacific is critical.

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Professor Warwick Britton, Head of the Mycobacterial Group

Professor Warwick Britton, Head of the Mycobacterial Group at Centenary and a Professor of Medicine at the University of Sydney, has been awarded $2.49 million towards a Centre of Research Excellence on tuberculosis control: from discovery to public health practice and policy – a collaborative program with colleagues from the University of Sydney, Woolcock Institute for Medical Research, University of Melbourne, Vietnam and Indonesia.

The grant adds to Centenary’s investment and effort in containing the spread of TB, still one of the world’s most devastating infectious diseases
and a growing threat to Australia. Drug resistant strains of tuberculosis are prevalent in Papua New Guinea, our closest neighbour.

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Progress in hepatitis C treatment is astonishing

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Professor Geoff McCaughan, head of Centenary’s liver program.

Professor Geoff McCaughan, head of Centenary’s liver program.

Prof Geoff McCaughan has an editorial in today’s Medical Journal of Australia saying that hepatitis C therapy is undergoing radical and rapid change. He predicts that within five years we will have short-duration anti-hepatitis C therapy with minimal side-effects and cure rates above 90%.

The burden of hepatitis C (HCV) associated liver failure and liver cancer is rising so these new drugs are just in time.

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How immune cells prowl like ocean predators – reported in Nature today

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Professor Wolfgang Weninger

Professor Wolfgang Weninger

Centenary’s resident immune system imager and dermatologist, Professor Wolfgang Weninger, has played a key role in proposing a new model of how the enforcer cells (T cells) of our immune system search for a parasitic pathogen in the brain.

And it turns out that T cells on the prowl have much in common with marine predators, such as tuna and sharks, as to how they track down their prey.

It’s part of a long-standing collaboration with researchers in the US. The work has just been published in the top-ranking science journal Nature and should give us a better handle on how to support the body’s defences against disease.

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Is the cure hiding in the computer?

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Dr William Ritchie

Dr William Ritchie, Research Fellow and Group Head of Bioinformatics

Tonight Dr William Ritchie will tell some of Centenary’s biggest supporters about how fast computing is transforming research at the Institute.

He’s speaking at our 2012 Foundation dinner to a who’s who of Sydney’s business community.

He’ll tell them how a new generation of medical researchers: mathematicians, physicists and engineers are invading research laboratories. They’re hunting through the gigabytes of information produced in the lab and finding patterns: gene sequences connected with certain cancers for example; or DNA sequences that don’t seem to be doing anything. They’re even running virtual experiments – doing in seconds what would take months of laboratory work.

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Setting new standards in treating hep C

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Professor Geoff McCaughan, head of Centenary’s liver program is setting world standards for treating hep C

Professor Geoff McCaughan, head of Centenary’s liver program is setting world standards for treating hep C

The Centenary Institute has a strong interest in making sure the products of research are used in medical treatment as quickly and safely as possible. And our interest doesn’t stop at the doors of the RPA.

For the past five years, the head of the Institute’s liver unit Professor Geoff McCaughan has led an international working party of experts convened by the Asian Pacific Association for the Study of the Liver (APASL) to revise the guidelines for the study, prevention, diagnosis, management and treatment of hepatitis C in keeping with the most recent research. The latest version of their work has just been published in the journal Hepatology International, and reflects the significant international standing of the Institute’s liver group.

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Genetic testing for heritable heart disease cost effective

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Dr Jodie Ingles

Dr Jodie Ingles

Genetic testing for the most common genetic heart disorder, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, can save money as well as lives, according to a study from the Centenary Institute just published in the British journal Heart.

The research was based on data from the National Genetic Heart Disease Registry. Lead author was National Registry Coordinator, Dr Jodie Ingles and senior author, the Registry Advisory Chair, Professor Chris Semsarian.

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