Dr Holly Voges receives Laurie Cox Leadership Award

Murdoch Children’s Research Institute’s (MCRI) Dr Holly Voges has received the inaugural Laurie Cox Leadership Award for her dedication to finding treatments for rheumatic heart disease.

The accolade, established by a group of MCRI donors, honours the legacy of Laurie Cox AO, whose leadership as MCRI Chairman from 1993 to 2009 played a pivotal role in shaping our growth and success. The award celebrates research excellence and projects with potential global impact.

Rheumatic heart disease is a chronic health condition, particularly impacting our First Nations children. The condition is caused by damage to the heart valves due to complications of having a Strep A infection. Children aged between five 5 and 14 years are most likely to be impacted.

Dr Voges said her team’s cutting-edge heart valve stem cell models, created in the lab, would be used to explore how immune cells, following a Strep A infection, damaged heart tissue.

Image: Dr Holly Voges

“Strep A causes a sore throat in some people but can cause more serious or invasive complications in others,” she said. We just don’t have the answers behind how that process occurs.

“The key to reducing or ending rheumatic heart disease will be identifying what goes wrong in the immune system and which treatments could reverse or slow down the heart tissue damage caused by this infection.”

The Laurie Cox Leadership Award also supports Dr Voges' participation in the community-led Deadly Heart Trek program, which involves heart health leaders scanning, diagnosing and managing rheumatic heart disease in remote areas in the Northern Territory.

Dr Voges said the award would allow her to educate children and families and volunteer in communities where a greater focus on rheumatic heart disease was needed most.

She was joined at MCRI recently by three generations of the Cox family (pictured above) to celebrate her award.

Read more about MCRI’s Heart Regeneration research.