Research into kids’ brain health, cancer treatments given funding lifeline.
Two researchers using stem cell science to pursue new treatments for types of brain degeneration and solid cancers in children have been given a funding lifeline after narrowly missing out on Australian government grants.
Each will receive $100,000 as the inaugural grant recipients of the new Near-Miss Funding Program, an initiative we’ve launched in partnership with the Australasian Society for Stem Cell Research (ASSCR).
Fernando Guimaraes from The University of Queensland will develop a manufacturing pipeline to supply clinical grade off-the-shelf, genetically enhanced natural killer cells for children with cancers that currently have no effective treatment options. Read on for more about his work.
Merja Joensuu, also from The University of Queensland, is working to better understand why fats accumulate and cells degenerate in the brains of children with certain genetic disorders. More below.
We’re able to fund their work thanks to the generosity of our donors. Please make a donation so that together we can continue to make a difference.
What if we could change the fate of a human cell? That’s the idea Jose Polo will explore in a free public event on 13 October in Adelaide. Read on for more information.
See beautiful stem cell images and the favourites from the public vote in this year’s reNEW art exhibition. More below.
We’ve been delighted to see stem cell pioneer Shinya Yamanaka on the cover of Time imagazine.
We’re also thrilled to see the growth of Australian scientists we’ve supported, including:
- New ‘mini guts’ to study inflammatory bowel disease, derived from stem cells by Helen Abud and her colleagues at Monash University
- $6 million national grant to establish the WA Centre for Cell and Genome Engineering, to be co-led by 2015 Metcalf Prize winner Ryan Lister from Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research and The University of Western Australia
- Bioengineer and 2023 Metcalf Prize winner Jiao Jiao Li from UTS has been recognised as Professional Engineer of the Year at Engineers Australia Sydney Division Excellence Awards
- ‘Altas of the heart’ online research resource has been created by 2019 Metcalf Prize winner Jame Hudson and his team at QIMR Berghofer.
These stories and more in our regular round up of news.
Kind regards,
Dr Graeme L Blackman AO
Chairman, National Stem Cell Foundation of Australia
In this bulletin:
- The living drug: funding lifeline keeps a Brisbane cancer therapy on track
- Fixing fat and fuel in the brain cells of children with rare neurodegenerative disease
- Adelaide event: 'Exploring the Boundaries of Human Reprogramming'
- Public votes and jury select winning stem cell art
- Stem cell news from around the world
The living drug: funding lifeline keeps a Brisbane cancer therapy on track
Could we give cancer-killing immune cells superpowers?
Every day, a small population of immune cells, barely one to three per cent of the white blood cells patrolling the body, quietly stops most cancers before they start.
“They’re constantly patrolling and checking if there are other cells that could become cancers,” says Associate Professor Fernando Guimaraes, an immunologist at the University of Queensland’s Frazer Institute. “If there’s a risk, they eliminate them.”
These are natural killer (NK) cells, and turning their inbuilt cancer-hunting ability into a treatment is the focus of Fernando’s lab. Using stem cell techniques, his team grows NK cells in bulk and gives them what he calls “superpowers” — genetic engineering that sharpens their ability to recognise and destroy tumours.
His lab is targeting solid cancers that still lack effective treatments: triple-negative breast cancer, recurrent ovarian cancer, and paediatric sarcomas.
Getting there depends on funding that, until recently, kept narrowly slipping away.
“I have been applying for NHMRC fellowships for years, and it’s always close but not close enough,” he says.
The Foundation and the ASSCR are piloting a new Near-Miss Funding Program to overcome this cycle of application and near-miss rejection. Fernando is one of two researchers awarded $100,000 each so that they can continue their research and strengthen their programs for resubmission to major funding bodies.
Fernando’s goal is a “living drug”: a cell therapy that can be manufactured at scale, frozen, and infused into a patient when they need it.
Fixing fat and fuel in the brain cells of children with rare neurodegenerative disease
Foundation grant keeps research momentum going
A rare genetic disease that stops children’s brains from turning fats into fatty acids means a lifetime of difficulty for patients and their families. These children lose motor control, develop severe spasticity and intellectual disability, and there is no treatment.
Brisbane researcher Dr Merja Joensuu is challenging fundamental assumptions about the way the human brain uses fat for energy production. With enough funding, her work could lead to treatments for the disease hereditary spastic paraplegia (HSP) type 54.
Already, Merja has shown, in animal models of this disease, that replacing missing fatty acids reverses majority of the effects. Moving toward a treatment for children means first proving it holds true in human cells, but funding for her research through the NHMRC Investigator Grant program has been elusive, despite her application being highly ranked.
That is where the new Near-Miss Funding Program from the Foundation together with ASSCR comes in. They are backing Merja with a $100,000 grant to continue and strengthen her research at the University of Queensland’s Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology.
For decades, neuroscience had assumed the brain ran on sugar alone, treating fat as mere structural scaffolding.
Merja’s team found otherwise: neurons, they discovered, quietly burn their own fat for fuel.
Adelaide event: We can change the fate of a human cell – what does this mean?
Professor Jose Polo: Exploring the Boundaries of Human Reprogramming
Reprogramming specialised adult cells back into stem cells revolutionised cell biology, offering an alternative to embryonic stem cells, shedding light on early development, providing a way to recreate patients’ diseases in the lab and tissues for testing treatments, and paving the way for cell therapies that could restore vision loss and treat other diseases.
Meet pioneering reprogramming scientist Professor Jose Polo at the Inaugural National Stem Cell Foundation of Australia Oration, a free public event held in partnership with Adelaide University.
Jose will explore questions of how far can we push the boundaries of what a cell can become and what might this mean for the future of regenerative medicine, disease treatment and human health.
When: Tuesday 13 October, 5:30pm ACDT
Where: Adelaide Health and Medical Sciences building - Adelaide University, North Terrace, Adelaide.
Register: https://events.humanitix.com/national-stem-cell-foundation-of-australia-oration
Jose is Professor of Epigenetics and Director of the Adelaide Centre for Epigenetics at Adelaide University, Program Lead in Cancer Epigenetics at the South Australian ImmunoGENomics Cancer Institute (SAiGENCI) at Adelaide University, and Group Leader at the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute. He also serves as Scientific Head of EMBL Australia.
Through his pioneering research, Professor Polo has made groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of cellular reprogramming – the process by which cells transform into different types. His work integrates cellular models, genomics, and computational approaches, driving advancements in stem cell science with far-reaching implications for both research and industry.
In 2014, Jose was one of two winners of the Foundation’s inaugural Metcalf Prizes for Stem Cell Research. In 2016, he co-founded Mogrify Pty Ltd to translate cell reprogramming technologies into clinical applications, bridging the gap between discovery and real-world impact.
His global influence on the field was recognised in 2024, when he was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.
Public votes and jury select winning stem cell art
reNEW's #ARTxSCIENCE virtual gallery is back
In ‘the golden fuse time’ (pictured above left), PhD student Yinghan (Winnie) shows stem cell-derived myoblasts fuse together into muscle fibres —a golden moment in skeletal muscle development. She is part of David Elliott and Enzo Porrello’s group untangling genetic heart and skeletal muscle diseases at the Melbourne node of Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Stem Cell Medicine – reNEW.
‘Let it flow’ by research assistant Sophia Mah (centre image) shows the complexity of kidney tissue architecture, with blood filtering nephrons shown in blue with surrounding epithelial tissue in red. Sophia is part of Melissa Little’s team using lab-grown kidney organoids to study chronic kidney disease.
And ‘a kidney in the making’ (right) depicts exactly that; an image taken by Ker Sin Tan, also a research assistant in Melissa Little’s team.
These are three entries from Team Australia in reNEW’s annual #ARTxSCIENCE exhibition, raising awareness of the life-saving potential of stem cell research and the Australian and Danish researchers behind it.
12 finalists have been selected by a public vote, with the final winner (selected by an international jury) to be revealed on Global Stem Cell Awareness Day, 14 October 2026.
This virtual exhibition showcases images captured by scientists through real microscopes and other biomedical imaging equipment. It’s displayed online with the help of AI tools that create a gallery-like experience.
Visit: https://renew.science/artxscience/
Stem cell news from around the world
Between newsletters, we share stem cell news on social media:
Here are a few stories we’ve shared recently:
ABC: Melbourne researchers create intestinal models to research inflammatory bowel disease.
Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research: Perth researchers awarded $6M national grant to establish WA Centre for Cell and Genome Engineering.
Time: Longevity Leaders 2026: Shinya Yamanaka made cells young again. Can that reverse aging?
7NEWS (video): Queensland researchers have created a world-first ‘Atlas of the Heart’.
InDaily Queensland: Brisbane researchers create new map of the human heart. Paper.
Hudson Institute of Medical Research: Stem cell science unlocks more mysteries of the menstrual cycle.
University of Technology Sydney: Harnessing stem cells to produce nanoscale therapeutics for osteoarthritis – A/Prof Jiao Jiao Li wins Professional Engineer of the Year (Sydney) award from Engineers Australia.
Phys.org: Oldest human brain cells grown in lab ‘recorded passage of time’. Paper.
ABC Radio Melbourne: Scientist Melissa Little and artist Patricia Piccinini speak with Rafael Epstein about the role of art, creativity and science in shaping conversations about emerging technologies.
Lab+Life Scientist: Heart valve tissues created from stem cells. Paper.
Drug Target Review: Stem cell-grown kidney organoids could help uncover new treatments for acute kidney injury.
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About the Foundation
The National Stem Cell Foundation of Australia is an ATO-registered tax-deductible Health Promotion Charity dedicated to promoting the study and responsible use of stem cells to reduce the burden of disease.
The Foundation’s activities include:
- supporting research that pursues cures for as-yet-untreatable diseases
- building a community of people with a shared interest in stem cell science
- providing the Australian public with objective, reliable information on both the potential and risks of stem cell medicine.
We are working to build a community of people with a stake in stem cell science and to promote collaboration between scientists locally and internationally.
Please feel free to contact the Foundation’s General Manager Graeme Mehegan via [email protected]
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We're keen to build a community of people with a stake in stem cell science to educate the community and support patients, clinicians and researchers. Feel free to pass this newsletter on to anyone who might be interested.
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For decades, a bone marrow transplant has been the best — and often last — hope for people whose leukaemia or lymphoma had outrun chemotherapy. A bone marrow transplant is essentially a type of blood stem cell transplant.
Dr Rhiannon Werder is growing ‘mini-lungs in a dish’, which mimic the complexity and function of lungs in living people.
Dr Maria Di Biase has created a ‘brain bank’ of schizophrenia: blobs of brain cells from 100 patients, growing in the lab. She’s using these brain organoids to develop urgently needed new approaches to diagnosis and treatment.
Waking up brain stem cells at the right time could one day improve cognition and fight neurodegenerative diseases and cancer, according to Dr Lachlan Harris, a researcher at QIMR Berghofer in Brisbane.
The brain remains one of the greatest biological mysteries. Often referred to as the body’s ‘control centre’, this complex organ of nervous tissue makes us uniquely who we are: living, breathing, thinking, feeling human beings.
Up until a few decades ago it was widely believed that the brain had neither stem cells nor the ability to regenerate itself.
Neuroscientist Professor Kaylene Young – one of two recipients of the Foundation’s inaugural Metcalf Prizes – assisted with the establishment of the Queensland Brain Institute in 2003.
Monash University researcher Associate Professor Atul Malhotra is leading a clinical trial to explore feasibility and safety of using donated umbilical cord blood-derived cells to help repair brain injury associated with preterm births.
This year, 24 researchers [pictured with ASSCR 2025 organising committee members] received grants to attend the meeting on the Gold Coast in Queensland, and present their work.
Unacceptably so, according to Monash University researcher, Associate Professor Atul Malhotra, Senior Consultant Neonatologist and Head of Monash Children’s Hospital’s Early Neurodevelopment Clinic.
Dr Felicity Davis won a 2019 Metcalf Prize for her research into 
Dr Rhiannon Werder is growing ‘mini-lungs in a dish’ that mimic the complexity and function of lungs in living people.
Dr William Roman is growing human muscles on a chip. He’s using them to understand how the skeletal muscle cell, the largest cell in a human body, connects with neurons and tendons to create working muscles.
Stem cell scientists have turned their research into works of art in a competition and exhibition to celebrate Global Stem Cell Awareness Day 2024 (October 9).
Two past Metcalf Prize winners – cardiologist and researcher 
University of Technology Sydney biomedical engineer Dr Jiao Jiao Li plans to use stem cells as biofactories to make drugs to reduce inflammation and encourage repair in painful osteoarthritic joints.
Rare but extremely debilitating gut disorders, like paediatric achalasia and Hirschsprung’s disease, can affect the fundamental ability to swallow and digest food and pass stools. Children with these conditions endure a lifetime of potentially life-threatening symptoms that severely impact their daily lives, require repeat hospitalisation, surgery and ongoing care.
Endometriosis, a painful condition caused by the growth of endometrial-like tissue outside the uterus, affects one in nine reproductive age women, half of all infertile women, and more than half of women and teenaged girls with pelvic pain.
Now is the time to apply for grants and submit abstracts.
Human sex characteristics develop in the womb. About one in 100 babies are born with variations, some of which are linked to health problems such as increased cancer risk, heart disease, osteoporosis, intellectual disability, or infertility.
Little Lilly Lloyd-Morgan, aged 8, lives with a debilitating condition which stops her swallowing food. But there is hope on the horizon thanks to a potential stem cell therapy being developed by Dr Lincon Stamp and Dr Marlene Hao at the University of Melbourne.
Lincon and Marlene are developing a therapy that involves making healthy nerve cells from stem cells. These cells would be transplanted into patients like Lilly to replace the damaged or lost nerve cells and restore function.
Grow heart cells together in a petri dish and they know what to do – they start beating. Now they’re being used to find drugs to heal the heart. Eye cells are being grown to test gene therapies for blindness. Human brain cells growing together make connections and can even learn to play Pong! They are also providing a valuable tool to reveal how the brain ages.
Dr Jiao Jiao Li plans to use stem cells as biofactories to make drugs to reduce inflammation and encourage repair in painful osteoarthritic joints.
People diagnosed with late-stage stomach cancer have a less than 10 per cent chance of surviving more than 5 years.
“Australians will pay a lot to relieve the pain of arthritis—sometimes opting for unproven therapies using stem cells.”
Extremely premature babies’ own stem cells could hold the key to a new treatment for brain injury associated with preterm birth.
Dr Anai Gonzalez-Cordero’s research aims to restore sight in people with inherited retinal diseases, by repairing or replacing damaged photoreceptor (light-sensing) cells in the eye.
Dr Ashley Ng is revealing how blood stem cells are controlled, and how they sometime go rogue, leading to blood cancers. He has discovered how a protein known as ‘ERG’ underpins healthy development of blood cells, and how it also plays a role in Down syndrome-associated leukaemia and a range of other blood cancers.
Melbourne researcher Dr Peter Houweling is growing mini-muscles in the lab, in order to study muscular dystrophy in children, without the need for invasive and painful tissue biopsies.
Developmental biologist Dr Sarah Withey is using mini liver ‘organoids’ made from patients’ stem cells to test a potential treatment for children with a rare, genetic, progressive, life-limiting disease – Ataxia Telangiectasia (A-T).
Cardiac stem cell researcher Professor Enzo Porrello, a 2018 Metcalf Prize-winner, will be Director of reNEWS’s Melbourne node.
With your support, the Foundation wants to help fund Gerard’s research and bring this life-changing treatment to clinical trials.
Associate Professor Siok Tey is researching treatments that will improve the survival and quality of life for her patients with leukaemia or other blood cancers.
Dr Pengyi Yang plans to transform stem cell research.
Melbourne university student and long-distance runner Billy Morton, 22, was first diagnosed in his early teens with a rare genetic disease that is causing his eyesight to deteriorate. At the time there was no prospect of a treatment, but progress in gene therapy research is providing new hope.
Billy, with the rare genetic disease choroideremia, is one of 190 million people worldwide with diseases causing the death of light-sensing photoreceptor cells in the eye.
Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death for all Australians. Every year more than 57,000 Australians suffer a heart attack. Many develop heart failure. 
Each year, the Foundation selects up to four promising Australian stem cell research projects that need a funding boost to help them progress new therapies to human clinical trials.
Past
ISCT 2021 took place last week.
Back in Melbourne, Graeme visited Professor Tom Edwards in his lab at the Centre for Eye Research Australia where he is developing 
The Foundation is backing Professor Mark Shackleton’s stem cell research aimed at preventing melanoma and treating vitiligo – two diseases affecting the melanin pigment-producing cells, called melanocytes.
“In essence, there’s two main diseases which arise from melanocytes: one involves having too many melanocytes, which is melanoma, and the other results from not having enough melanocytes, which is vitiligo,” Mark says.
Proteins which control the growth of cells in embryos could teach us how to stop the uncontrolled growth of cells that is the hallmark of cancer, thanks to work by molecular biologist Dr Melanie Eckersley-Maslin.
Clinical haematologist Associate Professor Steven Lane wants to lift the survival rates of his leukaemia patients. He thinks the key could lie in the genetic fingerprints of the blood cancer stem cells that proliferate the disease.
2016 Metcalf Prize winner James Chong kicked off 2020 with a major journal publication on New Year’s Day. His study, published in Science Translational Medicine, showed a new protein therapy could encourage 
US researchers created programmable living machines – dubbed xenobots – by assembling cells from African clawed frogs into robots that can move around on short stumpy legs. These living robots could deliver small amounts of material, such as medicines or useful reagents. 
“Australia’s research workforce will be severely impacted by the pandemic and the effects are likely to be felt for an extended period.”
One such is Professor Ryan Lister (pictured with WA Science Minister Dave Kelly) who, in late September, was named joint 
Frozen cord blood became a vital back-up source of blood-forming stem cells during COVID-19 travel restrictions.
Preclinical results for the MCDS drugs have been encouraging, but if we are to progress the drug to the next phase, and identify other drug candidates, we need to know exactly how it works. 
Associate Professor Mike Doran from Queensland University of Technology is exploring the potential of special cells taken from placentas to repair non-union bone fractures.
We join the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) and International Society for Cell & Gene Therapy (ISCT) in raising concern about the marketing of unproven stem cell therapies to treat people infected with Coronavirus disease (COVID-19).
ISCT 2020 will be accessible remotely and on-demand, including live and recorded sessions that are certified for accreditation programs, in addition to networking events, poster halls, and one-on-one partnering opportunities. 
The ISSCR Annual Meeting brings together scientists, clinicians, business leaders, ethicists, and educators from more than 65 countries.
Stem Cells Australia (SCA), a $24 million-dollar Australian Research Council Special Research Initiative, has formally come to an end. 
SCA will continue as an educational website, administered by the University of Melbourne, providing teaching resources for schools, and reliable information for people making choices about their own health care.
Cardiologist and researcher Associate Professor James Chong has already used human stem cells to repair the damaged hearts of other large primates — a world first. 
Professor Emeritus James A. Angus AO is a biomedical pharmacologist with a strong scientific and leadership background. He was Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences at the University of Melbourne from 2003 to 2013.
The Foundation took the opportunity to transition to a different management model. Graeme Mehegan has taken over the day-to-day running in the newly created role of General Manager. He has served the Foundation as Company Secretary and CFO since its inception in 2012.
On 28 November 2018, He Jiankui claimed to a packed conference room at the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing in Hong Kong to have edited the genomes of two twin girls, Lulu and Nana, who were born in China.
2017 Metcalf Prize winning computational biologist Jessica Mar is analysing stem cells to discover the changes that influence ageing. Who will win the 2018 Prizes?
Your bone marrow makes one million new mature blood cells every second. Your life depends on it!
Cardiac disease affects at least 1.4 million Australians and almost 350,000 will have a heart attack at some point in their life. One in every two people with severe heart failure will die within one year of diagnosis. Stem cells may have the potential to treat heart failure.
These are just some of the things a live audience learnt from six Australian stem cell scientists at the ‘Stem Cell Research—Now and in the Future’ forum—the public event held in the lead up to the ISSCR 2018 Annual Meeting in Melbourne.
The audience heard about the current state of play with research and treatments for eye, skin, heart, kidney and blood disorders. They also had the opportunity to ask the panel their own questions; from what inspired the panellists to become stem cell scientists (with one freaky sci-fi related answer), to the treatment options here and overseas for MS.
On Wednesday 26 June, Melissa received the National Health and Medical Research Council Elizabeth Blackburn Fellowship – Biomedical. The Fellowship is named after 2009 Nobel Laureate Elizabeth Blackburn who discovered how chromosomes are protected by telomeres. Melissa was one of 20 of Australia’s finest health and medical researchers honoured at the NHMRC’s annual Research Excellence Awards in Canberra.
