Help our researchers develop life-saving medicines and prevent cardiovascular disease.
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in Australia – it claims the life of one Australian every 12 minutes and can affect any gender and any age, even babies.
Congenital heart disease is the most common birth defect in Australia, with one baby born every 4 hours with a heart defect. It costs the Australia health system $12 billion every year.
At the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB), we are tackling the problem of cardiovascular disease through multiple, innovative approaches to increase scientific knowledge about the heart’s biology and develop the next generation of cardiovascular medicines.
Every gift is meaningful.
Recent advances in cardiovascular research at IMB include research and development of:
– A new treatment candidate for both heart attack and stroke that is shown to prevent cell damage due to oxygen deprivation, using a molecule from the K’gari funnel-web spider.
– A device to allow donor hearts to rest and rejuvenate before transplantation, improving the donor organ quality and more than doubling time donor hearts can remain viable to nearly 9 hours, allowing retrieval from remote geographic locations.
– An mRNA vaccine against Strep A, which causes rheumatic heart disease.
– Genomics research to understand why people from different backgrounds are more susceptible to cardiovascular disease.
– Investigating how blood vessels and tissues develop and function to understand their role in disease.
The difference you can make.
$50 – could help cover day-to-day lab expenses.
$100 – could help researchers analyse patient samples for genetic studies.
$500 – could help with patient recruitment for research studies.
$1000 – could help provide research assistance.