Heart Disease

Cardiovascular disease accounts for over a third of all deaths in Australia each year, with more than 45,000 Australians losing their lives to a form of the disease.

While death rates have declined in the last decade, more three million Australians are affected by cardiovascular disease annually.

The ageing population, increasing levels of obesity, lack of physical activity and the increasing number of Australians living with diabetes, will all contribute to the significant impact cardiovascular disease has on our community.

The Centenary Institute is working across a range of projects to improve the diagnosis and treatment of people with cardiovascular disease including:

• the identification of new gene abnormalities in patients with heart disease, to understand the basis of how these gene mutations lead to disease.
• investigating how biological signals communicate between and within cells, and how they go awry leading to the development of human diseases such as heart disease.
• understanding of the function of endothelial cells and the genes that are critical to the different processes, expanding the potential ways we can influence their activity and targets for drug development.

For more information on the work Centenary researchers are doing on cardiovascular disease, visit:

• Molecular Cardiology
• Signal Transduction
• Vascular Biology