Dr Drew Neavin has developed a stem cell-based method that fast-tracks research identifying how bipolar disorder medications work in different people. This could offer a path to personalised treatment for the 568,000 Australians who have this serious lifelong mental health condition marked by pronounced mood swings. 

Drew grows stem cells from scores of different people together in a single dish to work out why a medicine that helps one person fails, or causes harm, in another.

The ‘village-in-a-dish’ technique she helped develop makes large-scale stem cell studies faster and cheaper. It could lead to simple tests that tell doctors which drug to prescribe for bipolar disorder and similar conditions, and which patients are at risk of serious side effects.

In recognition of her leadership in stem cell research, Drew, a group leader at The University of Queensland’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience, has received one of two annual $60,000 Metcalf Prizes from the National Stem Cell Foundation of Australia.

“We have a lot of data that links genetics to human traits, but the in-between information – what happens to the genes, the RNA and the proteins – is often missing,” says Drew. “My group uses stem cells to bridge that gap.”
Stem cells carry their donor’s unique genetic makeup and can be turned into heart cells, brain cells or almost any other cell type.

But spotting genetic patterns means comparing cells from at least 100 people, and hundreds of separate dishes need a large team. Small differences in handling can muddy the results.

The village approach pools cells from many donors in one dish. Each cell’s own DNA acts as a barcode, so the researchers can later work out which cell came from which person.

In a 2023 study in Nature Communications, Drew and colleagues at three Australian labs showed that cells behave the same way in a village as they do when grown alone.

Her team is now using the village-in-a-dish technique to grow ‘mini-brains’, or brain organoids, from many people at once, then exposing them to lithium and other medicines used to treat bipolar disorder.

“We’re hoping this will help us narrow down the pathways that are being altered, and why some people respond and others don’t respond as well,” she says.

The Metcalf Prize will help Drew tackle a problem that holds the technique back. Faster-growing cells can crowd out the rest: in one of her experiments, the cells of five donors out of 18 were lost within 15 days. Brain organoids take far longer to grow.

“I’m leaning on the Metcalf Prize to try out some ideas to get beyond that challenge, so we can scale this even further,” she says.

Because most of the medicines she studies are already approved, any genetic marker that predicts response could be tested in patients who are already taking them. Drew estimates that could put a discovery into clinical use within five to 10 years.

Originally from Minnesota in the United States, Drew moved to Australia about seven years ago and spent more than six years at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney. She established her own independent lab at The University of Queensland in January 2026.

Over the years, her research has been funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council, Medical Research Future Fund, St Vincent’s Research Foundation, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Perpetual, and others.

Drew Neavin om the lab pictured alongside images collected by her team members Benjamin Khoo Wu-Yang and Clarissa Tan: motor neurons (centre) and stem cells derived from mature patient cells (right). Images courtesy of University of Queensland.