Children’s Medical Research Institute (CMRI) welcomes the NSW Government’s establishment of the NSW Organoid Innovation Centre – a first of its kind in Australia – which will involve CMRI’s Stem Cell and Organoid Facility led by Dr Anai Gonzalez Cordero.

The Minister for Science, Innovation and Technology, Alister Henskens SC MP, announced that $2.5m would be spent on the centre through the Emerging Industry and Infrastructure Fund which aims to further reinforce NSW as the centre for synthetic biology and biomanufacturing.

The centre will be led by Professor Michael Kassiou at The University of Sydney in collaboration with Dr Shafagh Waters at the UNSW and Dr Gonzalez Cordero at CMRI.

Dr Gonzalez Cordero was recruited to Sydney from University College London in 2019 lead CMRI’s Stem Cell and Organoid Facility as well as its Stem Cell Medicine Group. Her team will be producing the organoids needed by the new centre.

“The establishment of the NSW Organoid Innovation Centre really shows how far our field has advanced in recent times, and it is very exciting to be at the forefront of medical research right here in Sydney.’’

Dr Gonzalez Cordero and her laboratory team transform small samples of skin or blood into stem cells, which can be directed to turn into almost any type of cell, and then to form organoids (mini-organs). For example, over many years Dr Gonzalez Cordero has developed the expertise needed to generate neural (nerve), retinal, or cardiac cells, enabling scientists to study the causes of human diseases that impact the brain, eyes, or heart.

Organoids speed up the development and testing of new therapies, especially for inherited diseases, but there is an urgent need for large-scale production which will now be possible with this new centre.

The cells that CMRI provides to the NSW Organoid Innovation Centre will be accessed by researchers, institutes and company-based researchers to shorten the time between discovery of new treatments and their availability to patients who need them.

“We’re grateful to the NSW Government for their vision and foresight, because without this investment we wouldn’t be able to develop and test new therapies for patients living with genetic disease who currently have few or no options for a treatment or cure.’’