CCRG named in the Top 100 Innovators for 2024

CCRG collaborators, Dr Arutha Kulasinghe and A/Prof Kirsty Short, together with CCRG Founder Director Prof John Fraser, are among The Australian’s Top 100 Innovators for 2024 for their work leading the Wesley Research Institute’s Queensland Spatial Biology Centre (QSBC) in Brisbane.

CCRG collaborators, Dr Arutha Kulasinghe and A/Prof Kirsty Short, together with CCRG Founder Director Prof John Fraser. Photo: Nick Cubbin.

The Australian’s “The List” curates an annual list of ground-breakers and visionaries who are revolutionising their chosen fields.

This year’s list also includes a special focus on health, a sector that draws on the deep historical well of medical research in Australia, and is proving fertile ground for a new generation of scientists and clinicians.

QSBC’s research program began when researchers were able to track down century-old human lung tissue samples via CCRG’s global COVID-19 Critical Care Consortium. The program has now expanded into world-leading research on how to manage the treatment of Australia's deadliest diseases, including cancer, heart disease and lung disease.

“We’ve effectively shown we can mine tissues or go back and look at ancestral tissues that are over 105 years old,” said Dr Kulasinghe.

The “back to the future” project works on extracting data from tissue samples collected during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, with the goal of better understanding future pandemics and mapping individual cells to help doctors understand how patients are responding to treatments.

Each sample slide is run through the PhenoCycler-Fusion system machine - the only one of its kinds in the country - which creates about 10 terabytes of data, equivalent of almost 300 days of video.

You can read the full article here or by downloading a copy of the pdf here.

Thank you to The Australian’s Natasha Robinson and Mackenzie Scott for your helping tell the story of the growth of spatial biology in Australia, Wesley Research Institute’s CEO Andrew Barron and team for supporting the ongoing partnership between CCRG and QSCB, and Deanna Nott, Wings Public Relations for securing this fabulous coverage.