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Congratulations to Dr Holly Voges on being awarded an National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Ideas grant, that aims to discover ways to reverse heart valve damage.
NHMCR grants are designed to support Australia’s highest-performing researchers.
Dr Voges was awarded $860,000 from the national funding body to explore reversing heart valve damage using human stem cells, paving the way for new rheumatic heart disease (RHD) treatments.
RHD affects 33 million people worldwide, disproportionally impacting children in low- and middle-income countries. In Australia, this condition significantly impacts Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and there is no vaccine or medicine to repair the damaged heart.
“To find a cure for this autoimmune disease we need to work with human heart cells, as RHD does not occur in animals,” Dr Voges said.
“We will determine how inflammation causes irreversible damage in human heart valve tissue, grown from stem cells and investigate how to reverse it.”
