Don't miss out on hearing three of our leading researchers at the Luminesce Alliance Conference 2026 – a national conversation on the future of paediatric precision medicine. Early Bird registrations close 1 September. 4–5 November 2026 Register: www.luminesceallianceconference.org.au/register/

It is always fantastic for our scientists to sit down with Dr Karl Kruszelnicki and explain what they do! This time it was CMRI A/Prof Anai Gonzalez Cordero who spoke about her work with stem cells and organoids. Watch the full interview here: https://youtu.be/kFPZnRj0hVw?si=_aZc-8qgrVxD76HU

Congrats to Prof Tony Cesare on being awarded an NHMRC Investigator Grant (L2)! Tony is Head of the Genome Integrity Research Unit at CMRI and his research on how cells protect DNA is driving new approaches to cancer treatment. This grant will support his research over the next 5 years.

Our scientists shared their work at the recent Westmead Research Showcase. Prof Roger Reddel did the official welcome and researchers Macabe Daley and Daniel De Los Reyes Helices did presentations about their work. Our facilities were also well represented.

1/2 We are delighted to announced that Dr Ashley Yang has received a three-year fellowship from Maddie Rieworldt’s Vision to offer hope for children living with telomere-related bone marrow disorders. Dr Yang hopes to lay the groundwork for personalised gene therapies for patients.

Great to see the work of Professor Hilda Pickett and Dr Madushan Fernando feature in a review article in Trends in Nature Cell Biology. Their review was titled “Telomere heterochromatin-mediated compartmentalization: Where ALT begins’’. Read more here https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42248718/

1/5 Congratulations to Dr @edenrobertson.bsky.social and Associate Professor Anai Gonzalez-Cordero on receiving a Medical Research Future Fund Stem Cell Therapies Grant.

An exciting new publication is out revealing new ways to treat drug-resistant #epilepsy. Congratulations to Professor Phil Robinson and his collaborator Professor Adam McClusky for their work published in ACS Publications. Read more here: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acschembio.6c00046

1/3 Today, Professor Robyn Jamieson received a $200,000 grant to support her innovative use of organoids to better understand retinal disease. @sydney.edu.au Learn more here: www.cmrijeansforgenes.org.au/news/major-w...

Always great to see our scientists being called upon as experts in the field. This time Prof Hilda Pickett was invited by The Scientist to talk about a recent discovery in the telomere field. Read more: https://ow.ly/sQkf50Z9L0u

Dr Mawj Adam in our GTRU has won an ATA Scientific Encouragement Award for her work in advancing gene therapy strategies for paediatric metabolic liver disorders. Mawj will now present her work at the upcoming Australasian Gene and Cell Therapy Society Biennial Meeting. https://ow.ly/2OIp50Z9eb2

Wonderful to see CMRI’s Prof Hilda Pickett share her world-leading telomere biology research at the European Molecular Biology Organisation conference in Italy. Her advances are shaping our understanding of genome stability and disease—an inspiring moment for Australian science! EMBO

Researchers from The Westmead Institute for Medical Research, Westmead Breast Cancer Institute, NSW Health Pathology and CMRI's ProCan® team have published new findings in npj Breast Cancer. Read the publication here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41523-026-00976-3

Congratulations to @lizconnolly.bsky.social on her PhD in Medicine from the @sydney.edu.au. Through her work with the #ProCan team at #CMRI, Liz’s #sarcoma research is helping advance precision #cancer care. We’re proud to help train the next generation of clinician-scientists.

We’re proud to celebrate Dr Zhaoxiang (Simon) Cai, senior ProCan data scientist, who has been awarded a highly competitive Cancer Institute NSW Fellowship. His groundbreaking AI research is helping transform the future of cancer diagnosis. Read more here: www.cmrijeansforgenes.org.au/news/data-sc...

A team of scientists at CMRI, in collaboration with partners at The Kids Research Institute Australia, has discovered a previously unrecognised lethal genetic neurodevelopmental disorder, with findings published in Acta Neuropathologica. Read more: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00401-026-03017-2

1/3 In a new publication from CMRI’s Stem Cell Medicine and Computational Biology Units, retinal organoids were used to define the role of retinoic acid (vitamin A) signalling in early human retinal development. Read the full pub: doi.org/10.1038/s414...

🧬New publication in Clinical Cancer Research: one of the largest tissue proteomic studies in colon cancer! aacrjournals.org/clincancerre... @westmeadinst.bsky.social @sydney.edu.au

1/3 We were pleased to hear CMRI Prof Robyn Jamieson featured on ABC Radio’s Evenings program this week, where she shared expert insights on the rapidly advancing field of gene therapy and its impact on restoring vision for Australians living with genetic eye disease.

Children's Medical Research Institute's Head of Computational Systems Biology, A/Prof Pengyi Yang, has a new publication out today in Molecular Systems Biology which involved developing a new AI method known as Hydra. @springernature.com Full pub here: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Interpretable deep generative ensemble learning for single-cell omics with Hydra - Molecular Systems Biology

Single-cell omics enable the dissection of cellular heterogeneity, yet the high dimensionality, inherent noise, and sparsity present significant challenges. These challenges are amplified for rare cel...

link.springer.com

Thank you to Mira and Charlie Taouk for sharing their heartbreaking story and 10 News + for talking to Professor Leszek Lisowski. You can watch the full story here: 10.com.au/news/nationa...

Sometimes science and art intersect! Congratulations to Leigh Nicholson from CMRI who won an Early-Mid Career Research award for her poster at the recent Light Microscopy Australia Symposium at the University of Sydney (USYD) for her incredible images highlighting our research.

We’re very grateful to the National Health and Medical Research Council for awarding CMRI’s Professor Hilda Pickett and a team of cancer researchers $5 million for their work to develop new treatments targeting some of the most aggressive and difficult to treat cancers.

1/5 We’re proud to announce that Dr Adel Aref has been awarded a $240K, three-year fellowship from the NSW Dust Diseases Board, administered through icare NSW under the Researcher Development Stream Awards Program to advance innovative work in ProCan.

1/Delighted to be part of a team from @cmri.bsky.social, @sydney.edu.au, the University of Wollongong, and SVI (Melbourne) awarded a $5M NHMRC Synergy Grant to explore: “A mechanistic approach to developing precision therapies for ALT-dependent cancers.” www.nhmrc.gov.au/funding/find...

CMRI’s study in Nature Communications reveals how cancer cells maintain telomeres, consolidating 7 years of research into one of the most comprehensive resources for exploring this critical aspect of cancer biology. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-67190-w Wellcome Sanger Institute Mathew Garnett

A world first for CTNNB1 syndrome. On 10 December 2025, the first child received a gene therapy for this rare condition. CMRI is proud to have contributed to the early research. Read more: https://www.cmrijeansforgenes.org.au/news/a-world-first-for-ctnnb1-syndrome

We are grateful to the National Health and Medical Research Council for granting four of our scientists highly sought after Ideas Grants. https://www.cmrijeansforgenes.org.au/news/cmri-researchers-awarded-four-nhmrc-grants Tony Cesare

Congratulations to Professor Leszek Lisowski for receiving a grant from Cure Alzheimer’s Fund in the US for his work trying to develop a gene therapy that could be used to treat Alzheimer’s and other brain disorders, including those that impact children.

Cancer researchers hope that a major new discovery, out in scientific journal Nature Communications today, could make chemotherapy much more effective. @natcomms.nature.com @natureportfolio.nature.com Read more here: cmrijeansforgenes.org.au/news/major-d...