Body areas:
Dr. Elizabeth Ng aims to understand how blood is formed during human development and uses this knowledge to differentiate blood cells from human pluripotent stem cells in the lab. She plans to generate blood stem cells for patients who require a transplant but lack a suitable donor.
Dr. Elizabeth Ng’s work focuses on generating transplantable hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs – blood stem cells – from human pluripotent stem cells. These HSCs can then be used for tissue repair and regeneration, disease modeling and the testing of pharmaceuticals and other therapeutic products. Currently, HSCs which can repopulate the entire adult blood system are sourced from donors, who are scarce. In the future, Dr. Ng hopes that HSCs grown in the lab will provide patient-matched cell therapies for sufferers of blood diseases. Dr. Ng has maintained a long-standing collaboration with Professor Andrew Elefanty and Professor Ed Stanley. They have together made important contributions to the development of human pluripotent stem cell technology as a powerful experimental platform.
Dr. Ng is principal investigator at the reNEW Centre for Stem Cell Medicine and a team leader in the Blood Development Laboratory at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI), Melbourne. After completing her undergraduate degree at the University of Melbourne, she received her PhD from Monash University, Melbourne in 2013. Her work focuses on generating transplantable hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) from human pluripotent stem cells for tissue repair and regeneration, disease modeling and the testing of pharmaceuticals and other therapeutic products.
Dr. Ng has devised and patented procedures for the generation of blood stem cells together with a lab-culture medium that supports the efficient production of large numbers of blood cells. This medium has been licensed and is commercialized by STEMCELL Technologies.
She has maintained a long-standing collaboration with Professor Elefanty (blood development) and Professor Stanley (immune development). They have together made important contributions to the development of human pluripotent stem cell as a powerful experimental platform to drive advancement in the reliable generation of different cells, the formulation of a new cell culture medium, and the use of genetic modifications of human pluripotent stem cell cultures.
reNEW researchers have a strong track record of scientific excellence in stem cell biology
They have performed pioneering work in stem cell research spanning different tissue and cell types, different technological advances and different stages of applied research. This provides an unprecedented international opportunity to utilise the combined wealth of knowledge, complementary skills sets and clinical experience across reNEW to push stem cell discoveries toward translational outcomes.