We want to introduce you to Dr Andrew Prowse, member of Phenomics Australia’s Scientific Director’s team and Head of the In-vitro Genome Engineering and Disease Modelling Service (IGEDMS) at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology – University of Queensland (UQ).
Meet Andrew:
Andrew has been studying and working in pluripotent stem cell biology since 2003. He received his PhD in 2008 from the University of New South Wales for his Thesis entitled “Investigating the factors potentially involved in the up-scale of human embryonic stem cells” which focused on low oxygen culture and the proteomic detection of proteins secreted by feeder layers. He joined the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology in late 2007 as a Postdoc where he conducted research into improving culture conditions for PSCs with a multidisciplinary approach. In mid-2013, Andrew moved to Toronto, Canada to work as Project Manager and Lead Scientist at the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine managing multidisciplinary translational projects and developing scalable Pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocyte differentiation, skills now incorporated into a $5M MRFF grant for Phase I clinical trials to treat cardiovascular disease. In addition to driving cell production of PSC-derived therapies, he is also the Facility Manager of StemCore, an NCRIS funded, ISO9001 accredited service provision facility specialising in reprogramming patient cells to iPSC, cell characterisation and gene-editing.
Phenomics Australia provides a national centre of expertise and service provision to deploy a more comprehensive and sophisticated range of in vitro Genome Engineering and Disease Modelling capabilities to understand the functional consequences of DNA sequence variation in the human genome for health and disease while maintaining the expertise for in vivo disease modelling and genome engineering. To meet the high demand for adaptable and scalable disease-modelling platforms for improved diagnosis, Precision Medicine for genetic disorders, and therapeutic development by both academia and the biopharmaceutical industry, Phenomics Australia offers In Vitro services through a collaborative consortium of ten laboratories and facilities across Australia, operating at ANU (ANU Centre for Therapeutic Discovery), Perkins (Translational Cancer Research Program in Oncology), Monash (Monash Organoid Program & Monash Genome Modification Platform), MCRI (iPSC derivation & Gene Editing Facility), Peter Mac (Victorian Centre for Functional Genomics), UMelb (Centre for Stem Cell Systems & Stem Cell Disease Modelling Laboratory), UQ (In vitro Genome Engineering and Disease Modelling Service), and VCCRI (Stem Cell Production Facility iPSC Reprogramming Service)
