Protect and repair

Discovering new ways to protect and repair the brain

When the brain is affected by an injury, a disease or disorder, it can change a person’s life drastically.

The Florey’s researchers in the Protect and Repair mission are renowned experts in a diverse range of brain conditions, united by their commitment to further our understanding of neurodegenerative diseases and brain injuries to improve care and develop new treatments, including the innovative use of stem cells to repair the brain.

The challenge

Key people

Conditions covered in Protect and repair

Research groups

Autonomic Neuroscience Group

We study the ‘housekeeping’ parts of the brain that control the body’s functions, like heart rate and temperature regulation. These control circuits are mostly in the hypothalamus and the brain stem. Autonomic nerves are the unconscious pathways that connect these circuits to every organ in the body, and they’re essential to keeping us healthy. They contain many subtypes, each of which has…
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AVERT Early Rehabilitation Research Group

The AVERT group works to develop the most effective treatments and environments to maximise recovery in people after stroke.
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Digestive Physiology and Nutrition Group

The digestive physiology and nutrition laboratory concentrates on digestive physiology and nutrition, and on animal models of digestive diseases, including inflammatory bowel disease.
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Multiple Sclerosis and Myelin Repair Group

We are multi-disciplinary group straddling the fields of immunology, genetics and myelin biology, with a particular interest in the intersection of these disciplines in MS susceptibility, severity and recovery.
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Myelin in Health and Disease Group

We study myelin's role in motor neuron disease and development using iPSCs and organoids, and investigate myelin in other diseases.
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Neurocardiovascular Physiology Group

Exploring brain communication with vital organs in disease we utilise advanced techniques to improve outcomes in heart failure, infection and inflammation.
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Neuroepidemiology Group

Within the institute, the Early Brain division focuses on understanding the neurodevelopment, neuroregeneration and networks of developing brain. The emphasis is also on disease prevention and understating triggers for disease onset such as environment, genetics and epigenetics.
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Neurogenetics Group

We aim to characterise the role of genes in human brain diseases with a view to improving biological and mechanistic understanding, thus facilitating the development of better therapies.
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Neuroinflammation Group

Neurodegenerative diseases affect cells in the brain, called neurons. Over time, these cells deteriorate and die. Associated with this death is an abnormal build-up of proteins such as tau or TDP-43. Most of these diseases, including dementias and motor neurone disease, have no cure and few effective treatments.
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Neurorehabilitation and Recovery Group

We are a multidisciplinary team of researchers, health professionals and research students committed to improving quality of life for survivors of stroke.
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Neurotherapeutics Group

This research team has expertise in Medicinal Chemistry (in association with Prana Biotechnology) and in biomarker discovery. More recently, it has focussed on the pathways leading to Parkinson’s disease, especially around the oxidative modifications of tau.
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Parkinson’s Disease Group

Our aim is to find a cure for Parkinson’s and improve patients’ lives with support from patients, caregivers, researchers and biotech companies.
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Peptide and Oligonucleotide Therapeutics Group

The focus of our research is to exploit antisense technology for the development of therapeutics for neurodegenerative diseases.
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Personalised Therapeutics Group

Our focus is on using emerging stem cell and genomics technologies to develop therapies for patients with Motor Neuron Disease, Parkinson’s disease and Dementia. We believe that patient stem cells (iPSC’s) holds the key to developing new tools to diagnose disease, classify disease sub-types, predict disease severity, and select the most effective therapies for patients.
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Pre-clinical Critical Care Group

Our laboratory is focused on understanding how genetic, neurochemical and structural changes that occur in the brain following myocardial infarction contributes to an overactive sympathetic nervous system and consequently disease progression into heart failure.
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Public Health and Health Services Research Group

The Australian Stroke Clinical Registry undertakes research to improve the delivery of evidence-based care and achieve better health outcomes after stroke.
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Sleep and Cognition Group

Our lab focuses on the role of sleep in memory, mood, emotion and neurodegenerative disease.
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Stem Cells and Neural Development Group

Our focus is using human stem cells to model neurological diseases, develop therapies, and understand human neural development for regeneration.
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Translational Cardiovascular and Renal Research Group

Sepsis and heart surgery both pose great danger for patients, as both can lead to brain injury and kidney injury. Our group aims to offer solutions to these major unresolved health complications. We want to deconstruct the pathological changes that happens in the brain and kidneys during sepsis and heart surgery and ensure the safety and efficacy of new mechanism-guided treatments for future clinical use.…
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Translational Neurodegeneration Group

The goal of our group is to discover and translate new drugs and biomarkers for patients with neurodegenerative diseases, specifically dementia. We conduct research across the translational spectrum, including cell culture, animal physiology, fluid and imaging biomarkers, and clinical trials, to better understand disease mechanisms and identify therapeutic targets. Our areas of focus include cell death…
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