The UNSW Cellular Genomics Futures Institute
The formation of the UNSW Cellular Genomics Futures Institute builds upon the growing scientific leadership in UNSW Sydney and the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in the field of cellular genomics.
Cellular Genomics is the next great revolution in medicine. Many diseases such as cancers, autoimmune diseases arise from genetic or epigenetic changes to only one, or a few cells, in a large population of cells. Until recently, technological limitations have meant that we have had to rely on bulk sequencing of cells, homogenising them together and averaging their information content to research and diagnose disease. These bulk measures mask the individual variation of each cell and limit the precision of treatment of diseases
Rapid advances in single cell technology combined with computational informatics means we now can analyse cells at the single cell level.
Our research is focused on inventing new technologies to decode the state of DNA, chromatin, RNA and protein outputs cell-by-cell for thousands of cells, with the purpose of developing tools for the precise diagnosis and treatment of human disease.
We will tackle major challenges in single cell data acquisition and data analytics to uncover cellular origin and evolution of disease.
This will have a major impact on the precision health management of patients, through early detection and personalised treatment of disease. Targeted healthcare will lead to the reduction in the cost of treatment both within Australia and globally.
Our success requires collaboration of experts from many disciplines, the collaboration between UNSW Sydney and Garvan Institute of Medical Research will produce a flagship program for scientific research for cellular decoding in Australia and position us to be a leading international player in this new field.