Students are in a unique position to benefit from technological expansion at the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute.
Baker IDI has a strong student base with over 80 students. The current student body consists of work experience, summer projects, AMS, Masters, Honours and PhD students.
Why choose Baker IDI for Post-graduate Studies?
The Institute’s commitment to world class research is reflected in our ongoing program to acquire and utilise state-of-the-art technology in our research efforts. We run a sophisticated, multimillion-dollar proteomics analysis facility. This new technology allows analysis of the global patterning and expression profiles of proteins within a cell or tissue and provides a revolutionary approach to identify even the very low abundance proteins whose altered activity may contribute to the disease state.
Technologically advanced gene therapy facility
Molecular biology studies at Baker IDI are also technologically advanced and include a gene therapy facility which employs viral-based vectors and transgenic approaches to introduce recombinant genes into living cells both in culture and in vivo. These technologies represent some of the most powerful methods to manipulate the expression of individual genes in situ and allow us to establish their relative contribution to the aetiology of cardiovascular disease. The localisation of newly identified proteins and of changes in expression of genes within tissues and cells are performed using confocal microscopy in the imaging facility. This facility enables investigation of the expression, distribution and colocalisation of proteins, allowing analyses of molecular interactions within live cells. These confocal microscopy techniques complement a strong program in imaging, with histological analysis of tissues, and imaging of live animals using echocardiography.
World-class animal facility
Baker IDI Institute also has a world-class animal facility with highly sophisticated surgical and transgenic models of hypertrophy, heart failure and vascular disease. The Precinct Animal Centre (PAC) is a purpose-built facility for breeding and housing animals to be used in medical research. The environmental conditions within the PAC ensure the highest standards of animal welfare. The PAC has security-coded access for researchers and specialist services for animal surgery, quarantine, and high-level containment areas.
Core service areas
Core service areas include surgical suites for conducting sterile recovery procedures, procedural areas for non-invasive procedures, autopsy of animals and recovery of tissues. Combined with all this is a skilled team of technical staff who can assist researchers in animal ethics applications, animal handling, technical procedures and animal care. Taken together, the capabilities of our animal facility coupled with proteomic, gene therapy and imaging approaches, provide an integrated molecular and cellular approach to investigate the causes underlying the development and progression of many cardiovascular diseases.
World class clinical trials centre
Baker IDI also runs a world class clinical trials centre to facilitate the development of new drug therapies to combat diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular and neurological diseases. Clinical Trials Victoria provides researchers with access to the resources and facilities to secure innovative, high quality clinical research trials and further establishes Baker IDI as the premier ‘bench-to-bedside’ cardiovascular centre in the southern hemisphere.
Research topics
This team works at understanding the prevalence of disease and disease risk in the population. The focus is on prevention, education as well as the development of better profiling tools.
This teams works at understanding the complex relationship between physical activity, weight regulation and the genetic and environmental underpinnings of metabolism to address the many complications of metabolic disorders and obesity.
Diabetes is a chronic, insidious disease on the rise in the community. Among its many debilitating complications are heart and vascular disease, kidney disease and eye disease. Understanding who is most at risk of the complications of diabetes and discovering ways to mitigate the effects of the disease is this team’s focus.
This team brings together studies on high blood pressure, kidney disease, the neurobiology of the relationship between depression and heart disease as well as research into the damage to arteries caused by atherosclerosis, and the damage caused by heart attack.
Heart failure, a devastating complication of heart attack survival and how better to treat atrial fibrillation (where the chambers of the heart beat out of sync) are among the research areas for this team. The focus is on taking laboratory findings and translating them into better surgical and therapeutic devices for people suffering from heart disease.