We are proud to announce that the Australasian Society for Stem Cell Research (ASSCR) 2025 Catalyst Prize has been awarded to the Stemformatics Atlas Team for their outstanding contributions to the stem cell community, recognising their exceptional innovation, collaboration and transformative impact in the last five years.
About the winning team:
Led by Phenomics Australia Scientific Director Professor Christine Wells, University of Melbourne, the team includes Dr Jarny Choi (bioinformatician), Dr Suzanne Butcher (early career researcher), Dr Zahra Elahi (early career researcher), Dr Nadia Rajab (early career researcher) and Dr Paul Angel (early career researcher)
About their work:
In the past five years, the team has developed methods for the integration of hundreds of datasets into atlases, providing a highly accessible data resource for researchers to benchmark their own iPSC-derived macrophage or dendritic cells against a curated atlas of primary human tissues.
Importantly, these resources are publicly available through the Stemformatics data sharing platform, which they developed in 2011. Their innovative work is poised to make a lasting impact and is an important step change in the way stem cell research is conducted.
Please join us in congratulating the Stemformatics Atlas Team on this well-deserved accolade. We look forward to their continued success.
The Stemformatics platform will soon be supported by a complementary resource: the Australian Stem Cell Registry, a forthcoming registry funded by Phenomics Australia. This planned searchable database will catalogue pluripotent cell lines available across the country, linking them to the laboratories that developed them and enabling researchers to trace their provenance and request access. Once launched, this capability is expected to accelerate collaboration among researchers working on specific disease models.
The Australian Stem Cell Registry will also complement the Australian Phenome Bank, which houses both a physical repository and a database of genetically modified mouse strains used in medical research across Australia.
We encourage readers to explore the recently published research paper by Mengqi Hu, investigating how accessible stem cell resources currently are and highlighting the importance of establishing the Australian Stem Cell Registry. The insights presented in this study provide valuable context for the development of the registry, and to learn more about the challenges and opportunities in sharing stem cell resources.
