28 July 2026
More than $10 million will be injected into innovative research projects to prevent and treat heart attack and heart failure, including in vulnerable groups like people with diabetes.
The projects include development of a blood-based test for healthcare clinics to support better diagnosis of heart disease before a major event like a heart attack strikes.
We also want to better understand heart disease risk in people with type 2 diabetes so we can develop prevention strategies, including for young and middle-aged people with early onset diabetes.
Four researchers from the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute will share in the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Investigator Grant funding, announced by the Federal Government today.
- Professor Peter Meikle is working to validate and develop a lipid test to improve the diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of diseases like heart disease. He has developed Australia’s only clinical lipidomics platform, allowing rapid and cost-effective profiling of 300 lipids (i.e. cholesterol) from a single drop of blood in six minutes. He received more than $3 million which will help him to partner with healthcare providers and industry to commercialise this blood-based test and make it available in GP clinics.
- Cardiologist and researcher, Professor David Kaye aims to improve outcomes in heart failure, one of the most common and disabling forms of heart disease globally where new solutions are urgently needed. He secured more than $2.8 million to uncover new mechanisms in heart failure, biomarkers to evaluate disease progression and therapies for both types of heart failure.
- Immune-driven inflammation, which can drive atherosclerotic heart disease where plaque builds up in the artery walls and can lead to a heart attack or stroke, is firmly within our sights. Almost $3 million will enable Professor Andrew Murphy to better understand how abnormal lipid metabolism drives immune dysfunction so we can target these dysfunctional immune cells and reduce the risk of heart disease.
- People with type 2 diabetes are about twice as likely to have a stroke or develop heart disease than people who don’t and a $1.6 million grant for Professor Eylem Levelt will help her better understand why. With this knowledge, she wants to reduce the heart disease burden in women and men with type 2 diabetes. This includes understanding what is driving the heart risk in young and middle-aged people with early onset diabetes and how heart failure manifests in people with diabetes who have had a heart attack.
Baker Institute Director, Professor John Greenwood says we're driven to transform heart health because the need has never been more urgent.
"Every nine minutes, an Australian is rushed to hospital with a heart attack or heart failure — that's the scale of what we're up against," Professor Greenwood says.
"Our agenda is bold: to transform how we prevent and treat these life-threatening conditions. We've made breakthroughs in these areas over many decades, and we're confident that our pioneering work will continue to save lives.”
