A Queensland-based researcher has received a funding boost to continue their work involving a ‘stem cell village’.
Dr Drew Neavin (PhD), a senior research fellow from the University of Queensland, has won the 2026 Metcalf Prize for Stem Cell Research.
The prize, awarded by the National Stem Cell Foundation of Australia, comes with $60,000 in funding to further Dr Neavin’s research into a stem cell-based method that can identify how medications for bipolar disorder work in different people.
Together with her team, Dr Neavin has developed a technique where stem cells from a large number of donors are pooled into a single dish. This “village-in-a-dish” technique makes running large-scale stem cell studies faster and cheaper than traditional methods.
The approach is now being used to grow brain organoids – or mini brains – from multiple people at the same time before exposing them to medications used to treat bipolar disorder such as lithium.
“We’re hoping this will help us narrow down the pathways that are being altered, and why some people respond and others don’t respond as well,” Dr Neavin told media.
The new funding will allow Dr Neavin to troubleshoot an ongoing issue with the “village-in-a-dish” technique, where faster-growing cells can crowd out the brain organoids.
“I’m leaning on the Metcalf Prize to try out some ideas to get beyond that challenge, so we can scale this even further,” she said.
Dr Neavin’s research could provide a path to personalised treatment for the more than 550,000 Australians living with bipolar disorder.
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The second recipient of the 2026 Metcalf Prize for Stem Cell Research is Dr James McNamara (PhD), a biomedical researcher from the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute in Sydney.
Dr McNamara’s work revolves around using “mini hearts” that are grown from stem cells of patients with genetic heart disease to identify genes responsible for damaging heart muscle.
This approach has allowed Dr McNamara and his colleagues to develop a gene therapy that restored heart function in lab-grown human heart tissue.
The Metcalf Prizes are named after the late Professor Donald Metcalf AC, a former medical researcher. Professor Metcalf helped change blood cancer treatment and transplantation medicine over a 50-year career, highlighting the potential of stem cell therapy in the treatment of many other conditions.
Drs Neavin and McNamara will formally be presented with the award at the Australasian Society of Stem Cell Research’s annual scientific meeting, which will be held in Melbourne on 9 November.
