New medicines for Rheumatic Heart Disease

Dr Holly Voges, Murdoch Children's Research Institute

Vanguard Grant - 2 Year

Years funded: 2025 - 2026

Developing future medicines for rheumatic heart disease

This project aims to identify future medicines for rheumatic heart disease (RHD). There are currently no medicines, vaccines or a single clinical test to diagnose or treat patients with RHD. RHD impacts more that 41 million people worldwide and causes irreversible heart valve damage that can lead to mortality. In Australia, RHD is rife in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, with women and children most at risk. RHD is triggered by a bacterium called Group A Streptococcus, which causes the immune system to wrongly attack healthy tissues. The bacterium causing RHD can readily infect and cause irreparable damage to valve tissue in the human heart but the process it not well understood.

Advancing RHD research using human heart valve tissue

Importantly, this bacterium doesn’t cause heart valve damage in any other animal, including rats and mice which are typically used in medical research. Therefore, there is a critical need to use human heart valve tissue for RHD research. Our project addresses this gap by using human heart valve tissue made from pluripotent stem cells. We will use human heart valve tissue and blood samples collected from RHD patients to uncover how the immune system causes valve tissue damage and develop future medicines for patients with RHD.