Click here to browse our Honours projects for 2023.
Projects
ARMI’s research groups work in a broad range and intersection of scientific research themes and disciplines, including heart and muscle development, immunity, stem cells, neural regeneration, and organ engineering and synthetic biology.
Click on the following links for more information:
Heart and muscle development and regeneration
We use the basic rules of animal regeneration to unlock regenerative potential in patients for treatment of a range of currently untreatable disorders.
PROJECT AREAS:
- discovery of the basic rules that govern formation of muscle stem cells in the embryo and adult
- better understanding of how stem cells are used during muscle regeneration
- treatments for muscular dystrophy using zebrafish models
- making the heart a better regenerating organ by stimulating specific signaling pathways.
RESEARCH GROUPS:
Immunity and regeneration
We exploit the immune system as a new player in regenerative medicine, which can be manipulated for therapeutic gain.
PROJECT AREAS:
- understand the role of the immune system in scar-free healing
- determine how immune cells form and are continually replenished
- define the immune system as a critical component of tissue regeneration
- understand the difference in immune regulation between the regenerative and non-healing context
- harness the immune system for delivery of therapeutics to regenerating tissues
RESEARCH GROUPS:
Stem cells and regeneration
We use knowledge gained from highly regenerative tissues and animal models to generate human cells that can treat a range of degenerative disease, and learn how to manipulate cell populations in the body to repair more effectively.
PROJECT AREAS:
- define how the genome is read and packaged to form a stem cell
- understand how a stem cell-like state is maintained and regained in induced reprogramming
- identify what environment cues (niche) and other cell systems (immune) interact to influence stem cell function
- enhance endogenous stem cell-mediated repair of injured tissues
- make therapeutically relevant cell types from stem cells to treat disease
- unravelling microtubule dynamic at the single cell level using live imaging
RESEARCH GROUPS:
Neural regeneration
We work on stimulating regeneration of the mammalian nervous system after damage and degenerative disease.
PROJECT AREAS:
- define how the brain and spinal cord respond after injury and what innate regenerative potential exists in the nervous system of mammals and non-human primates
- make neural cells from stem cell
- identify genes needed to make the brain form normally
- formation of neural stem cell populations in regenerating systems such as the zebrafish brain
- characterise relative regenerative differences in spinal cord of zebrafish and mammals.
RESEARCH GROUPS:
Organ engineering and synthetic biology
ARMI is exploring a number of innovative techniques to enhance function and form that is lost as a consequence of ageing and degenerative diseases.
These techniques explore various aspects of tissue engineering including organoid and organ on a chip technology, bioactive biomaterials and biointerfaces that simulate the cellular microenvironment at the micro and nanoscale, functional biomaterials and synthetic and biological matrices for tissue engineering and transplant development.
PROJECT AREAS:
- Characterising the local cell-autonomous and nonautonomous responses to an injury, including the production and role of alarm signal(s) and the response of stem/progenitor cells
- Exploring the impact of the discovered injury response pathways on the buffering of developmental noise (random perturbations during normal development)