Childhood heart disease

Who does it affect?

• Heart disease is the leading cause of death and disability in children
• 1 in 100 babies born every year are affected by congenital heart disease in Australia, which equates to approximately 3,000 children each year
• For the first time in history, there are more adults than children living with childhood-diagnosed heart disease

Our childhood heart disease research

We are focused on improving the lives of patients with childhood heart disease.

Our Heart Research group has world-leading expertise in assessing cardiovascular function and in conducting studies to improve our understanding of heart disease in children and young adults. This includes new ways to protect the heart during surgery and exploring the effect of cord blood cells on heart function in complex heart disease. As the nationally funded centre for paediatric heart transplantation in Australia, we have a particular interest in diseases affecting the heart muscle and advanced heart failure management.

Our Heart Regeneration and Heart Disease team aims to transform the treatment of childhood heart disease using stem cell technologies. Their laboratory harnesses the power of pluripotent stem cells to create human models of human disease as a platform for therapeutic development. The research pipeline spans the full spectrum from the operating theatre to the single cell, taking full advantage of the unique capacity of the Melbourne Children’s campus. The Heart Regeneration and Heart Disease teams are world leaders in generating heart organoids from patient stem cells. They use the heart organoids to investigate the causes of CHD in each patient, screen for drugs that damage or regenerate heart tissue, as well as investigate genetic causes of CHD.

The Melbourne Centre for Cardiovascular Genomics and Regenerative Medicine (CardioRegen) is a research centre on the Children’s Campus focused on improving the lives of patients with childhood heart disease (CHD). Our team of researchers and clinicians use genomics and stem cell medicine to understand the causes of CHD and the discovery of new treatments.

The Heart Flagship is a strategic and collaborative research program aiming to prevent or delay the onset of heart failure in infants, children, and the adults they will become. Embedded within Flagship is the Patient Advocacy Group (PAG), which gives a voice to heart failure patients and their families, and creates educational tools for the wider community to understand the journey of these patients. One of the key activities of the Flagship is the development of a stem-cell-derived bioengineered heart tissue patch for children in heart failure.

The Australian Cardio-Oncology Registry (ACOR) is a world-first combined paediatric and adult cardio-oncology registry designed to capture clinical, epidemiological and pharmaceutical data for every patient treated with cardiac toxic therapies. ACOR researchers are investigating which children, adolescents and adults are more vulnerable to cardiovascular disease or heart failure after treatment with cancer drugs. Genetic tests and heart imaging will determine who is at risk of heart damage so heart-protective medications can be applied.

Our vision

Our vision is to improve management of childhood heart disease and develop new therapies to treat the increasing prevalence of heart failure.

Where to next?

Melbourne Children’s surgeons, clinicians and researchers have united to transform outcomes for children with heart disease and heart failure. Our multidisciplinary team is currently performing preclinical testing of novel therapies for heart failure, and we aim to drive these into clinical translation in the future.