CELLULAR INTERACTIONS RESPONSIBLE FOR DEVELOPMENT, MAINTENANCE, AND STRENGTH OF THE SKELETON
With
Prof Natalie A Sims, PhD.
Deputy Director, St. Vincent’s Institute,
Melbourne, Australia
RESEARCHER PROFILE
Filmed in Melbourne, Australia | May 2025
Professor Sims directs the Bone Cell Biology and Disease Unit at St. Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research and is a Professorial Fellow at The University of Melbourne and Australian Catholic University.
She leads a team who studies the cellular interactions responsible for development, maintenance, and strength of the skeleton. She completed her PhD at the University of Adelaide, followed by postdoctoral work at the Garvan Institute in Sydney then at Yale School of Medicine, in New Haven, Connecticut, where she studied the role of the estrogen receptor in regulating bone structure.
She returned to Australia in 2001 to set up a laboratory at St. Vincent’s Hospital and SVI. Her laboratory studies the cellular interactions responsible for development, maintenance, and strength of the skeleton, including the IL-6 family of cytokines, using genetically altered mouse models, in vitro system and human specimens. She has published more than 140 peer reviewed original research articles, 48 peer reviewed review articles and commentaries, and 20 published chapters; H index of 64 (Scopus); more than 13,500 career citations.
Her work has been recognised by awards from her colleagues internationally, including the International Bone and Mineral Society Herbert A Fleisch Award (2013) and the American Society of Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR) Fuller Albright Award (2010) and Paula Stern Award (2020).
She is a Deputy Editor of the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research and serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Biological Chemistry. She has served as President of the Australia and New Zealand Bone and Mineral Society and is currently Executive Secretary of the International Federation of Musculoskeletal Research Societies.
Source: Supplied
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Muscle Cell Communication and Repair
Dr. William Roman is a Group Leader at the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute (ARMI) at Monash University. He obtained his PhD from Paris Descartes University and Freie University of Berlin, focusing on nuclear positioning during skeletal muscle development. Dr. Roman’s research journey has taken him across the globe, including postdoctoral work in Barcelona, tissue engineering in Lisbon, and a brief stint at Stanford University.
At ARMI, Dr. Roman leads innovative research on intercellular communication within muscle organs. His work involves growing human muscles on chips to understand how skeletal muscle cells interact with neurons and tendons. This research aims to develop better models for studying muscle diseases, drug screening, and even applications in cellular agriculture and biorobotics.
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Food and fasting periods as medicine to prevent disease
Professor Leonie Heilbronn is based at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI), where she leads the Obesity and Metabolism laboratory. Her research is at the interface between basic and clinical science. She is internationally recognised for her work in nutritional modulation in humans and has made major contributions to our current understanding of mechanisms underlying conditions such as insulin resistance, particularly inflammation and lipid metabolism. She has also contributed significantly to current concepts of caloric restriction (CR), intermittent fasting (IF) and time restricted eating (TRE) in humans. She has published more than 110 peer reviewed papers in scientific journals and is an Associate Editor of Obesity, and Obesity Research and Clinical Practice.
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Targeting chemotherapy resistance in ovarian cancer patients
Dr Alex Cole, from the Centenary Institute’s Centre for Biomedical AI, is now leading the research focused on developing a new treatment to counteract a protein called follistatin (FST), known for making ovarian cancer cells resistant to chemotherapy.
By employing cutting-edge molecular biology and directed evolution techniques, the project aims to create nanobodies—small, precise molecules—that can block FST. If successful, these nanobodies could enhance the effectiveness of chemotherapy and improve ovarian cancer treatment rates.
