The Turnbull Government has delivered on its election commitment to provide $4 million funding to make Australia’s first dedicated micro gut health research centre a reality.
The Microbiome Research Centre at Sydney’s St George and Sutherland Hospital campus will investigate microbiota in the gut, looking at how disturbance occurs and then how it causes disease, a critical step in preventing it happening in the first place.
It is estimated that half the Australian population will complain of a digestive problem over the next twelve months with some imbalances in microbiota connected to diseases including stroke, asthma, obesity, diabetes, mental health, and pre-eclampsia in pregnant women.
Having a healthy gut is essential to living a healthy life and all Australians will benefit from the findings of the Microbiome Research Centre.
St George and Sutherland Medical Research Foundation have been supporting important research for ten years and Professor Emad El-Omar and his team will lead the world with their findings around microbiota gut health.
Boosting our nation’s world leading medical research capability is a priority of the Turnbull Government.
During the election campaign we committed to fund and open this research centre and today it is a reality.
This new Centre will also improve research capacity by attracting more expert researchers to the region.
Research training will also be provided to people including medical and nursing students, junior doctors and nurses, mainstream scientists and senior faculty.
This Centre’s ground-breaking work will create new strategic links with national and international centres of research excellence.
It will provide an embedded research hub at the heart of a major health care campus in southern Sydney.
St George and Sutherland Hospitals serves a large proportion of the Sydney population and has a high clinical workload, making them ideal centres for research projects.
(ENDS)