Shaun Jackson

Biography

 Professor Shaun Jackson was recently appointed as Director of Cardiovascular Research, a joint initiative between the Heart Research Institute (NSW) and the Charles Perkins Centre (the University of Sydney). In addition to this role, he holds several other titles and adjunct roles, including: Australia Fellow, National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) of Australia (2010-2014), Adjunct Professor, Dept. Molecular and Experimental Medicine, The Scripps Research Institute, San Diego, USA (2009-current) and Adjunct Professor, Monash University (2014-current). Professor Jackson established his research team at the Monash University Department of Medicine at Box Hill Hospital in Melbourne Victoria, in 1998. Together with the Head of Department, Professor Hatem Salem, he founded the Australian Centre for Blood Diseases (ACBD), for which he was appointed Research Director. In 2004, the ACBD relocated to the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, as part of the Alfred Medical Research and Education Precinct (AMREP). In 2014, Shaun was appointed to his current role, as Director of Cardiovascular Research (HRI/CPC) in Sydney, NSW. Many of Shaun’s senior-author publications are in leading international journals including Nature Medicine, Nature Cell Biology, Journal of Cell Biology, PNAS, Nature Communications, and Journal of Clinical Investigation. His papers have been cited by the Faculty of 1000, with several nominated in the highest ‘Exceptional’ and ‘Must Read’ categories. Adept in translational research, Shaun co-founded a biotechnology company, Kinacia P.L., which performed the first Phase I human clinical study on PI 3-kinase inhibitors for development as novel anti-platelets. These inhibitors were subsequently purchased by Astra Zeneca for ongoing clinical development.

Research Interest

 Atherothrombosis is arguably Australia’s major healthcare problem, affecting >50% of the adult population. In particular, the development of arterial thrombosis in the coronary or cerebral circulation (causing acute myocardial infarction and ischaemic stroke, respectively) is a major clinical problem, responsible for more deaths in the community than any other disease process. Despite intense investigation over the last 40 years into the discovery and development of more effective antithrombotic drugs, the impact of these therapies on mortality rates has remained disappointingly low, with less than 1 in 6 patients taking antithrombotic therapies avoiding a fatal thrombotic event. This situation is likely to worsen in the future due to the rapidly growing incidence of obesity, diabetes and the metabolic syndrome. These diseases are typically more resistant to the benefits of antithrombotic therapy, thus there is a pressing need for the identification and development of more effective approaches. Research undertaken in our laboratory is focussed on understanding the mechanisms causing platelet hyperactivity in diabetes and the metabolic syndrome, with the aim of developing innovative new approaches to reduce thrombosis risk in these diseases. We are specifically interested in the biochemical and biophysical regulators (rheology) of platelet activity and function, including influence of specific signalling pathways such as PI 3-kinase and cell death pathways linked to apoptosis and necrosis. We are also actively examining new pathways that control the proinflammatory function of platelets linked to cardiovascular diseases.