CRY Ireland in partnership with Trinity College Dublin are awarded Research Funding through the Irish Research Council’s New Foundations Program.

An estimated 10,000 people in Ireland carry gene mutations for inherited cardiac conditions, with one young person dying suddenly each week from such syndromes. This statistic is mirrored across most countries with research and advocacy related to this a strongly motivated activity. The overall aim of this project is to advance advocacy of SADS and those affected by it, while at the same time generating a national network of excellence to tackle the burden of this disease at an international level.

CRY Ireland will be directly involved with Prof Michael Monaghan at Trinity College Dublin. The focus of the Monaghan lab (www.monaghanlab.com) is the development of novel biomaterial design-based strategies to regenerate or repair damaged tissues and restore biomechanical function using informed and optimised design approaches. Their work has received national and international recognition over recent years, with competitive research and funding awards to support their research.

We are delighted to receive support from the Irish Research Council to build this network over 2023. The partner organisation (CRY Ireland) will be ideal to link together clinicians, biologists and patient advocacy groups together through this New Foundations Project to achieve a one-health interdisciplinary approach in deciphering newer mechanisms underlying long QT syndrome and collaborating with the best labs and researchers in the world. Ireland already has a strong and dynamic activity in this area which could be strengthened under the umbrella of a unified effort.

We will assemble an Irish cluster of excellence towards a shared goal of improving awareness of SADS; and a unified approach and international visibility in the field with the goal of building international research collaborations. As a team we will build both our shared capacity and our knowledge in this field. At the end of the project, we will be in a position to apply for internationally competitive funding at a large scale; while at the same time work closely with CRY Ireland with a clear vision and strategy developed through this program.

Inaugural 2023 Michael Greene Summer Studentship

The student research bursary honours the memory of Michael Greene, founding chair of CRY, who formed the charity in 1996 following the sudden death of his son Peter. Michael and his wife Marie worked devotedly and tirelessly for the charity before Michael stepped down in 2018. He died in October 2022, aged 79, leaving a legacy that continues to impact the lives of hundreds of families and individuals across Ireland.

The first Michael Greene CRY Summer Scholarship has been awarded to Daniel Diez Clarke, a biomedical engineering student at Trinity College Dublin. The 2023 bursary will  be used to complete his study: ‘Engineering disease in a dish models of cardiac disease’, under the supervision of Professor Michael Monaghan at the Monaghan lab, Trinity College Dublin.

Monaghan’s lab engineer and design beating heart cells created from human stem cells, which are donated directly from healthy consenting adults (similar to blood donation). These human stem cells have the potential to be directed towards becoming any adult cell type in the body.

Specifically, researchers in the lab generate cells that constitute those populating the heart. Using these tools, they are able to create micro beating heart tissues and use these to study heart mechanics and disease. It I hoped that Daniel’s work will build towards the repertoire of materials that can be used in these systems to make them more realistic of the heart tissue in our bodies. This work has far-reaching effects both in terms of studying heart attacks and related inflammation, and towards studying human stem cells obtained from consenting adult carriers of gene mutations linked to inherited cardiac conditions which could cause SADS.