Student research project
Supervisor(s): Dr Alexander Pinto and Dr Malathi Imiyage Dona
Project summary
Chemotherapeutics — such as the anthracycline doxorubicin — are highly effective for treating cancer. However, doxorubicin can significantly damage the heart leading to early onset of heart failure, particularly in childhood cancer survivors. Doxorubicin also damages the heart in a sex-dependent manner, with females experiencing less heart damage and development of heart failure. Despite this knowledge the precise cellular and molecular bases for doxorubicin-induced cardiac damage is unclear. Virtually nothing is known of how doxorubicin impacts the disparate cell types of the heart in an age- or sex-dependent manner.
Using advanced single-cell sequencing and genomics techniques, this project aims to address these important gaps in our knowledge. Outcomes of this work may point to therapeutic strategies to prolong treatment of cancer patients with doxorubicin by ameliorating doxorubicin-induced cardiotoxicity and development of heart failure.
Related methods, skills or technologies
The project is suitable for an Honours or PhD student and will involve applying various skills and techniques, including:
- animal models of disease
- bioinformatics
- data analysis
- flow cytometry
- immunocytochemistry
- proteomics
- statistics.
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