Dr Kevin Watt is a Team Leader in the Heart Regeneration Laboratory at MCRI and Associate Investigator in the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Stem Cell Medicine (reNEW) whose research focuses on the biology of striated muscle and the development of human stem-cell models to understand and treat heart failure. His work combines molecular signalling biology with advanced human cell systems to uncover mechanisms that regulate muscle growth, metabolism and disease.

Dr. Watt contributed to defining roles for the Hippo signalling pathway effector YAP in skeletal muscle biology, helping establish Hippo signalling as a key regulator of adult muscle physiology. This work provided important insights into pathways controlling muscle growth, regeneration and metabolic function, with implications for muscle wasting disorders and metabolic disease. Building on this foundation in striated muscle biology, my research has increasingly focused using human induced pluripotent stem-cell (iPSC)–derived cardiomyocytes and cardiac organoids to study mechanisms of heart failure and to identify new therapeutic strategies. My work has contributed to studies examining cardiac maturation, sarcomere integrity and signalling pathways that maintain muscle proteostasis, as well as the development of more mature human cardiac organoid systems capable of modelling complex disease phenotypes.

Since 2022, I lead a multi-displinary team that seek to bridge fundamental muscle biology with translational discovery, using human stem-cell cardiac systems to understand disease mechanisms and support the development of new therapies for heart failure and cardiotoxicity.