Stem cells and endometriosis, pelvic floor injury; plus two $60K prizes for rising stars
Stem cells are changing our understanding of women’s health, potentially making endometriosis easier to diagnose, treating vaginal birth injury, and improving breast cancer treatment.
Find out more: watch a recording of a women’s health forum we recently held online. More below.
We’re looking for up-and-coming researchers with big ideas who we can support through the 2024 Metcalf Prizes for Stem Cell Research.
Two prizes worth $60,000 each will be awarded to one male and one female mid-career stem cell scientist. Applications close on Friday 9 August. Please consider if there’s someone you should nominate. Read on for more details.
Last year we awarded prizes to:
- Dr Jiao Jiao Li from the University of Technology Sydney who plans to use stem cells as biofactories to make drugs to reduce inflammation and encourage repair in painful osteoarthritic joints
- Dr Dustin Flanagan from the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute who is working to understand why some stomach stem cells turn cancerous and whether we can develop drugs to bring these misbehaving cells back to normal, healthy function.
Finally, in our regular round-up of stem cell news, American authorities are cracking down on more stem cell scams, fingerprint patterns have been shown to predict a regenerative therapy’s effectiveness, and “village in a dish” 3D chimeric model brains have been made, each containing stem cells from up to 5 human donors.
Kind regards,
Dr Graeme L Blackman AO
Chairman, National Stem Cell Foundation of Australia
In this bulletin:
- Watch: What’s next for stem cells and women’s health
- Do you know a rising star in stem cell research?
- Stem cell news from around the world
Watch: What’s next for stem cells and women’s health
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.
“It’s outrageous that it takes seven to 10 years to get diagnosed. This is what we want to change,” said endometrial stem cell researcher Caroline Gargett at the Foundation’s recent online panel event Future Medicine: Stem Cells and Women’s Health.
Caroline explained that menstrual fluid is a non-invasive source of endometrial tissue and stem cell populations and some endometrial proteins. It’s a biofluid that contains (a) biomarkers that can identify and help diagnose endometriosis, and (b) stem cells that can be cultured 3D functional clusters of tissue or ‘organoids’ that can be used to test drugs and other treatments.
Caroline was joined by Shayanti Mukherjee (both pictured) and Geoff Lindeman, who spoke about pelvic organ prolapse and breast cancer respectively.
You can watch a recording of the event on the Foundation website.
Read more about the speakers:
- Endometriosis: Professor Caroline Gargett, Hudson Institute of Medical Research - Foundation Director profile and story The untapped potential of stem cells in menstrual blood
- Birth trauma injuries and pelvic floor disorders: Dr Shayanti Mukherjee, Hudson Institute of Medical Research - Story Research transforming pelvic organ prolapse treatment
- Breast cancer: Professor Geoff Lindeman, WEHI, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and Royal Melbourne Hospital Prof - Foundation Director profile and WEHI profile.
Do you know a rising star in stem cell research?
Applications for $60,000 prizes for stem cell research are now open
Two up-and-coming leaders in stem cell science will receive $60,000 each to boost their career to the next level. If you know a promising stem cell researcher, encourage them to apply.
The 2024 Metcalf Prizes for Stem Cell Research are open to mid-career researchers working in stem cell research in Australia. They could be working in medicine or life sciences, government or academia, as long as they have a primary focus on stem cells.
Applications are open to those who have completed their PhD or MD (research-based) within the past five to 10 years (from August 2014 to August 2019). Allowances will be made for research-career breaks, such as maternity leave.
The winners will be chosen for their scientific excellence, proven leadership ability, and the potential to have a continuing influence on stem cell research in Australia.
Many past prize recipients have gone on to win significant grants and other success, such as:
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Closer to repairing the brain: since winning an inaugural Metcalf Prize in 2014, Kaylene Young has made a mark on glial stem cell and multiple sclerosis (MS) research. She is developing a family study and a world-first MS stem cell biobank to study the genetics and mechanisms of the disease, and a clinical trial of magnetic brain stimulation for brain repair. She is the Brain Health theme leader of MS Research Flagship at the University of Tasmania, which has been supported with a Medical Research Futures Fund (MRFF) grant, and has received other funding from MS Australia, ARC, NHMRC, and others. She is pictured (right) at the award ceremony with Don Metcalf, Gustav Nossal and fellow winner Jose Polo. - Building a blood cancer treatment from the ground up: Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre clinician-scientist and 2017 Metcalf Prize winner Mark Dawson won the Frank Fenner Prize for Life Scientist of the Year at the 2020 Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science. He has since been elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.
- Newborn babies offer clues for healing hearts: heart regeneration researcher and 2018 Metcalf Prize winner Enzo Porrello from Murdoch Children’s Research Institute is now director of the Melbourne Node of the recently established Novo Nordisk Foundation Centre for Stem Cell Medicine (reNEW) and he is the founding co-director of the Melbourne Centre for Cardiovascular Genomics and Regenerative Medicine (CardioRegen). He and his colleagues have received funding boosts from the MRFF Stem Cells Therapies Mission for a project that aims to repair and reconstruct tissues for kids with heart defects and a special MRFF grant to use stem cell models to screen potential treatments for COVID-19-realted heart damage.
You can read more about the Metcalf Prize alumni and the research they were awarded for on our website.
The Metcalf Prizes for Stem Cell Research recognise and honour the exceptional contribution made to stem cell research by the late Professor Donald Metcalf. In the course of his 50-year career, Don helped transform cancer treatment and transplantation medicine and paved the way for potential stem cell therapy for many other conditions.
The Metcalf Prizes form part of the Foundation’s mission to support researchers whose work improves our understanding of the human body and the diseases that affect it and leads to proven stem cell therapies.
Applications close Friday 9 August 2024. We encourage last year’s unsuccessful applicants to apply again this year if they are still eligible.
To apply online, and for a full list of criteria and conditions, head to the Foundation’s website: www.stemcellfoundation.net.au/metcalf_prizes.
If you have any questions about eligibility or the application process, please contact Tanya Ha at Science in Public, who administers the awards for the Foundation: [email protected]
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:
Herald Sun: Scientists find clues to endo diagnosis, and it is all in the blood.
University of Tasmania: “Profound impact,” legacy of a $10m multiple sclerosis funding boost.
Associated Press: Some hawking stem cells say they can treat almost anything. They can’t.
ScienceDaily: Lab-grown muscles reveal mysteries of rare muscle diseases.
RegMedNet: Fingerprint patterns predict the effectiveness of MSCs for cartilage regeneration.
Nature: These 3D model brains with cells from several people are first of their kind.
Medical Xpress: Fertility treatments could get a boost from stem cells.
Each year we award two $60,000 prizes to support the field’s rising stars and set them up for future success. And it’s working!
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.
