Associate Professor Shafagh Waters has commenced her term as Chair of the NSW Organoid Innovation Centre. She will continue the work of previous chair Professor Michael Kassiou, leader of the University of Sydney node of the Centre.
Her research is focused on cystic fibrosis and other respiratory diseases, where patient-to-patient variation is clinically important. In these cases conventional experimental models often don’t capture the complexity of an individual patient’s biology.
Patient-derived organoids on the other hand, allow Shafagh and her team to develop accurate experimental systems that can be interrogated, manipulated and scaled.
As the new Chair of the NSWOIC, Shafagh’s goal is to provide more researchers the opportunity to integrate reliable and reproducible advanced cell models into their research in the same way: “Reseachers can access collective expertise, which will help them identify the most appropriate human-relevant model for the biological or translational question they are trying to answer.”
The NSWOIC is open to researchers from across the state, and connects non-animal model capabilities across the University of Sydney, UNSW and CMRI. Available capabilities include, patient-derived organoids, pluripotent stem cell models, advanced culture systems, automation and screening.
“I would also like to see the Centre increasingly recognised as a place where researchers can bring complex translational problems and access both the expertise and infrastructure needed to address them.”
“Importantly, success is not simply about how many people use a facility. It is about what those capabilities enable — better science, stronger collaborations, meaningful publications, new therapeutic approaches and ultimately greater translation towards human health.”
