Professor Ido Amit at the Garvan Institute

Dr. Ido Amit of the Department of Immunology visited the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney, where he met senior staff to discuss the new Garvan-Weizmann partnership to establish a joint center for cellular genomics. The Garvan-Weizmann Centre for Cellular Genomics will be housed in the Kinghorn Cancer Centre in Sydney.

It will be Australia’s only multidisciplinary facility for cellular genomics: the study of the molecular genetic states of thousands of individual cells. Its mission will be to help researchers develop a detailed understanding of how the genomes and gene expression programs of individual cells in the brain, the immune system, and other organs change over the course of a lifetime, how cancers, autoimmune diseases, dementia and other conditions develop, and how to design new strategies for prevention and treatment.

In a presentation to Garvan staff entitled “The power of one: Immunology in the age of single-cell genomics,” Dr. Amit said the medical research potential of cellular genomics was enormous. “This entails the measurement of the activity of the genome in thousands of individual cells which can reveal a huge amount of information, with widespread impact for health.”

Garvan’s Executive Director, Prof. John Mattick AO said: “The partnership between Garvan and Weizmann is a major development that brings two outstanding research institutes together to address major problems in understanding human biology and disease, and is another example of the global reach of both.”