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). Dr. Watt leads a multi-disiplinary research team that combine fundamental muscle biology with translational discovery, using human stem-cell cardiac systems to understand disease mechanisms and develop new therapies for heart failure and cardiotoxicity.

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.