Rosemary Kirk

I am a second year DPhil student working with the Watkins Group and Toepfer Group as part of the CureHeart project, aiming to find cures for inherited heart muscle diseases. This group of diseases affects one in 250 people and can cause sudden death in young people or long term heart failure. My project involves developing iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes with genetic mutations that are seen in human disease, and then using these cells to test methods of correcting or compensating for the genetic mutation. 

Before coming to Oxford I was working as a junior doctor in Australia, having completed my BMed/MD at the University of New South Wales with the University Medal. During my undergraduate studies I completed a year-long research project with Professor Sally Dunwoodie at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, where I studied gene-environment interactions causing congenital defects and miscarriage in a mouse model. I am now studying in Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and in the future intend to work as a clinician-scientist in the genetic cardiology field. 

Cuny, H., Bozon, K., Kirk, R.B., Sheng, D.Z., Bröer, S., Dunwoodie, S.L. 2022. Maternal heterozygosity of Slc6a19 causes metabolic perturbation and congenital NAD deficiency disorder in mice. Disease Models & Mechanisms, 16(5), dmm049647.

Cuny, H., Rapadas, M., Gereis, J., Martin E.M., Kirk, R.B., Shi, H. and Dunwoodie, S.L. 2020. NAD deficiency due to environmental factors or gene-environment interactions causes congenital malformations and miscarriage in mice. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(7), pp.3737-3747. 

Interview with the BHF about CureHeart research - https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/our-research/cure-heart/meet-the-cureheart-team#interview