Uniting to fight heart disease: Five minutes with Dr.Anna Waterhouse

Dr.Anna Waterhouse from the Charles Perkins Centre and the University of Sydney Nano Institute talks about how a multidisciplinary approach can help develop innovative technologies for tackling some of our biggest health challenges, and how her team managed to keep their research going during the COVID-19 health crisis despite the challenges of physical distancing.

What is your background and how did you come to join the University?

I lead the Cardiovascular Medical Devices Group in the School of Medical Sciences in the Discipline of Physiology in the Faculty of Medicine and Health, with an affiliated Group Leader position at the Heart Research Institute. My lab is located in the Charles Perkins Centre. My research is very multidisciplinary, involving the development of new materials and technologies for medical devices and diagnostics. I focus on understanding how the body reacts to foreign materials from the nano to macro scale and strategies to make materials more compatible.

I did my undergraduate degree in Cell Biology at the University of Manchester in the UK, then my PhD here in the Faculty of Science with Professor Tony Weiss, working on bioengineering coronary stent coatings. I continued to work in the bioengineering field with a Postdoctoral and Research Scientist position at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard Medical School. I worked on developing a number of new blood-contacting medical devices, two of which were spun into start-up companies. I was the awarded a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) from the Australian Research Council in 2016 which brought me back here in a joint position between the University of Sydney and the Heart Research Institute

Can you tell us about the Nanorobotics for Health Grand Challenge you are working on with Sydney Nano?

I co-lead the Nanorobotics for Health Grand Challenge with Dr Shelley Wickham, who is in the Schools of Chemistry and Physics in the Faculty of Science. Heart disease is responsible for approximately 30 percent of deaths in Australia and it is also the most expensive, with annual costs projected to nearly double between 2012 and 2032, to $22 billion. There is an urgent clinical need for new early diagnostic techniques to try to prevent the development of heart disease. As early stage heart disease begins with molecular level changes in cells, we aim to create nanoscale robots that will navigate the blood vessels and detect fatty deposits (atherosclerotic plaque) that signal the start of arterial blockage and allow treatment before the disease progresses.

We have brought together a multidisciplinary team from multiple faculties including heart surgeons, physicists, chemists, engineers and medical researchers to achieve this goal. At the University of Sydney, we are positioned to drive this innovation with enabling support from Sydney Nano, and key collaborations with world leading cardiovascular expertise in the Charles Perkins Centre, Heart Research Institute and Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, and access to state-of-the-art facilities such as nanofabrication and robotic surgery capabilities.

How have you managed to work across so many multidisciplinary teams during this time?

It has been difficult, but it has involved a lot of Zoom meetings and applying strategies of agility and resilience to our lab. This allowed us to focus on the most achievable immediate goals in this new environment, whilst staying on track for the longer-term technology development goals. Importantly, lot of time was spent providing the means to allow increased communication and cooperation between our teams to maintain social distancing whilst still being able to carry out the research. Credit goes to our team members who have come up with innovative ways to do this and help each other out so not everyone has to be in the lab all the time. Multidisciplinary research involves teamwork by its nature, we learn so much from our co-researchers who have different backgrounds from our own, so we already conducted research as a team effort and I think this has actually been strengthened during this time of shared uncertainty.

You were recently awarded a Robinson Fellowship, how has that positively impacted the work you do?

The Robinson Fellowship has been enormously beneficial through the support that the program provides. It has provided research funds allowing me to conduct projects linked to our Sydney Nano Grand Challenge, and this has enabled me to recruit students from different backgrounds and grow my multidisciplinary team. It also provides career development support with mentoring and skills development workshops which is extremely helpful at my career stage.

What is the best piece of advice you have ever received?

I think it was something along the lines of ‘lead the best whole life you can lead’, which I’ve been thinking about more recently. I think it speaks to the importance of maintaining balance in life and the importance of self-care and taking time for yourself to do things other than work - which is usually when I have moments of inspiration about my research anyway!