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© 2025 Garvan Institute of Medical Research
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We dive deep into the minds of our amazing researchers to find out how they tick and how they are working to make our lives better.
30 Episodes
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Pancreatic cancer is one of the toughest cancers to treat – it’s aggressive, often diagnosed late, and doesn’t respond well to standard therapies. In this episode, we meet Professor Marina Pajic who is working at the cutting-edge of science to transform how we understand and treat this disease.Support Garvan research: https://www.garvan.org.au/support-us/give-nowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Garvan is one of Australia's largest independent medical research institutes with a single focus: to make discoveries that will improve health for all. In this episode, you’ll hear from Executive Director Professor Benjamin Kile on how he came to be at Garvan's helm and his strategy for driving extraordinary science that will have transformational impact for patient lives.Support Garvan research: https://www.garvan.org.au/support-us/give-nowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In Australia alone, 50 people are diagnosed with Parkinson's every day. Therapy options are limited, as they are for other movement and muscle disorders, such as ataxia and dystonia. In this episode of Medical Minds, we meet neurologist and researcher Associate Professor Kishore Kumar, who is working on the next big breakthroughs for treatment.Support Garvan research: https://www.garvan.org.au/support-us/give-nowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The human body has an incredible capacity to heal itself – whether it’s a paper cut, a broken bone, or your lungs recovering after a chest infection. But not all types of healing are good for us. Cancers seem to have hijacked the healing process to protect themselves from treatments and to spread more easily around the body. In this episode, we speak to Associate Professor Thomas Cox, who is working to put a stop to this and make existing cancer therapy more effective.Support Garvan research: https://www.garvan.org.au/support-us/give-nowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
More than 33,000 people in Australia today are affected by multiple sclerosis, a disabling disease of the brain and spinal cord, for which there is no cure. In this episode, you’ll meet Dr Seyhan Yazar and Professor Tri Phan who are working to better manage, treat and prevent MS, by investigating what could be a critical link between this disease and a very common virus, the Epstein-Barr Virus.Support Garvan research: https://www.garvan.org.au/support-us/give-nowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Scientific advances have led us to diagnosing, treating and preventing cancer much better than ever before. Still, 10 million people die of cancer every year and what we need now are transformative ideas. In this episode you’ll hear from Dr Amanda Khoury and Dr Braydon Meyer who are using AI to develop the next generation of cancer treatments and diagnostics.Support Garvan research: https://www.garvan.org.au/support-us/give-nowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Our gastrointestinal system contains more than 70% of the body’s immune cells and can house more microbial cells than there are human cells in our entire body. Unravelling all that complexity is more important than ever, with conditions affecting the gut, such as Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis, on the rise. In today’s episode, we speak to Dr Kylie James who is taking a genetic deep dive – using single cell genomics – to develop more personalised approaches to preventing and treating inflammatory bowel disease. Support Garvan research: https://www.garvan.org.au/support-us/give-nowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The relief of a successful cancer treatment is all too often marred by a distressing, lingering uncertainty of whether a cancer will return. Cancer cells can tuck away and lie dormant for years before waking up to spread once again. In this episode we speak to Professor Peter Croucher who is tackling some of the toughest problems in cancer research – how can we track cancer cells on their way to becoming dormant, how can we stop them from waking up and how can we eradicate them from our system completely?Support Garvan research: https://www.garvan.org.au/support-us/give-nowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Genomics is fundamentally changing the way we think about health and disease and driving forward personalised treatment options that would have been pure science fiction just a few years ago. Still, some parts of our genome are more ‘mysterious’ than others. In this episode, we meet Garvan researcher Dr Ira Deveson who is spearheading cutting-edge DNA sequencing methods to future-proof how genomics will integrate into healthcare.Support Garvan research: https://www.garvan.org.au/support-us/give-nowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Every day, we accumulate trillions of mutations in our body’s genetic material. How does our body stay the course amidst this constant genetic change and what's the link between our genes and our well-being? In this episode we speak to clinician researcher Associate Professor Owen Siggs who explains why genomics may be as much a part of your future GP visits as taking your blood pressure or checking your cholesterol.Support Garvan research: https://www.garvan.org.au/support-us/give-nowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
If you’ve ever seen an image of fluorescent cancer cells under the microscope, you may agree that it’s hard to understand how something so beautiful could be so deadly. In this episode, we speak to Professor Paul Timpson who is visualising pancreatic cancer in vivid detail to understand what the cancer's weak spots are and how to improve treatments for patients.Support Garvan research: https://www.garvan.org.au/support-us/give-nowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
A few hundred years ago, the idea of cells moving around in your body, protecting you from disease would have seemed like complete fantasy. Today, we don’t just know those remarkable cells exist – but we can visualise them in vivid detail. In this episode we meet Professor Tri Phan, a clinician-researcher who has combined his expertise in medicine and microscopy to unravel how our immune system works and how to stop it from going wrong.Support Garvan research: https://www.garvan.org.au/support-us/give-nowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
A tumour is often thought of as a kind of chaotic tissue – cancer cells multiplying without control or reason, wreaking havoc in the body with devastating outcomes. In this episode we speak to Professor Alex Swarbrick who is charting an ‘atlas’ through that chaos, using cutting-edge genomic technologies to reveal the intricate inner workings of breast cancer.Support Garvan research: https://www.garvan.org.au/support-us/give-nowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Thanks to technology and the convenience of our modern lifestyle, we are far less active today than previous generations. But how have our bodies adjusted to that massive physical slow-down? In this episode, we speak with endocrinologist and clinical scientist Professor Katherine Samaras, who is working every day to improve lives.Support Garvan research: https://www.garvan.org.au/support-us/give-nowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
There's no doubt that medical research is accelerating – thanks to cutting-edge technology we can do experiments faster, at a bigger scale and crunch more data more efficiently. But today we're talking to Associate Professor Liz Caldon, who is slowing down her experiments to understand how we can better tackle cancer drug resistance.Support Garvan research: https://www.garvan.org.au/support-us/give-nowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
APDS is a rare inherited immune condition that has been reported in less than 300 people worldwide. So how could studying it help improve outcomes for the millions of people who live with autoimmune disease? Today, we meet A/Prof Elissa Deenick, a researcher who is taking a deep dive into the genetics of immune cells to make sure no patient gets left behind.Support Garvan research: https://www.garvan.org.au/support-us/give-nowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Inside your blood stream, billions of immune cells are working hard to protect you – from bacteria, viruses, fungi, toxins – anything that could disturb your body's delicate balance. But how does this immune protection work? Today, we meet Professor Stuart Tangye, a scientific detective who is working to solve the immune system puzzle.Support Garvan research: https://www.garvan.org.au/support-us/give-nowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
1Imagine being able to explore the fascinating world of individual cells and their genomic makeup, to unravel the mysteries hidden within our cells and to uncover the intricate mechanisms that cause disease. Today we meet Professor Joseph Powell, a cellular genomic scientist working on cutting-edge research that's improving the effectiveness of personalised therapy.Support Garvan research: https://www.garvan.org.au/support-us/give-nowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The immune system is a complex network designed to protect our bodies from harmful invaders. But sometimes it can turn on us attacking our own cells and in doing so, causing autoimmune disease. Over the last 50 years, research into our immune system has advanced to identify particular drivers that protect us from autoimmune disease. Researchers are learning how these responses are tuned under various environmental and genetic circumstances. Professor Rob Brink is working to understand these fine-tuning aspects and how we can manipulate them through the advent of cheaper and faster DNA sequencing.Support Garvan research: https://www.garvan.org.au/support-us/give-nowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In early 2020, the world was plunged to the start of a pandemic that has affected every aspect of our lives. We’ve come to realise how vulnerable we are to viruses. The pandemic has also brought so much more science into awareness, with bell curves and an understanding of immunology than we’ve ever had before. But it’s not over yet – and in this episode, we talk with Dr Deborah Burnett, who’s doing her part to end the pandemic by working on a universal vaccine.Support Garvan research: https://www.garvan.org.au/support-us/give-nowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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