Prof. John O’Sullivan, Dr. Koay, Prof. Lal, Prof. Bannon and Dr. Rob Hume
Baird Institute researchers have published two new papers in high impact international journals on exciting breakthroughs. Discover more about these papers below:
- Prof. John O’Sullivan, Dr Koay, Prof. Lal, and Prof. Bannon have discovered for the first time ever that the human heart can make its own rescue fuel called ketones. They have also demonstrated how to augment this process to improve cardiac function in heart failure. Using genetic models, human heart tissue, human heart cells, isotope tracing, and “trans cardiac” blood sampling (comparing blood going into blood leaving the heart), they identified how the machinery in this process is mechanistically involved. They will now screen new potential compounds as potential new therapies for patients. This work is in press at Circulation Research, one of the world’s top cardiology journals.
- Dr Rob Hume, Associate Professor Sean Lal and visiting University of New South Wales medical student, Mr Matthew Cook, have recently published a review in the journal Heart. This publication, entitled ‘Transcriptional, proteomic and metabolic drivers of cardiac regeneration’, explores the current understanding of how the heart muscle grows during development, from the embryo to the adult. It also covers how the heart muscle has a limited ability to regrow following injury, a process known as cardiac regeneration. Importantly, it covers new strategies researchers are using to amplify cardiac regeneration, to heal hearts damaged by heart attacks (myocardial infarction). This research area is of particular interest to Dr Hume and A/Prof Lal, who are currently working on developing such therapies to regenerate damaged hearts and reverse heart failure.
