Jacinta Kalisch-Smith

In my independent research as part of my BHF CRE Transition Fellowship (2023-2025) and now as a BHF Intermediate Fellow, my group at the IDRM focuses on understanding how the placental vascular network is created in mice and humans, and how their gene programs are governed. I will generate new genetic tools, use light sheet imaging to characterize placental vascular development, and determine how deletion of placental vascular genes impact congenital heart defects, miscarriage and stillbirth. See recent reviews in Placenta and Development journals. My collaborators for this project are Prof Shankar Srinivas, Prof Sarah De Val and Prof Nicola Smart (University of Oxford), Prof Amanda Sferruzzi-Perri (University of Cambridge). 

I obtained my PhD in Brisbane, Australia, investigating the impacts of periconceptional alcohol exposure on the early embryo, uterine environment and placental formation. In 2016, I was awarded the Australian and New Zealand Placental Research Association (ANZPRA) New Investigator award for this work.

My work with Professor Nicola Smart's group (ongoing project, IDRM) investigates factors produced by the epicardium to encourage vascular sprouting of the sinus venous to form the coronary vessels. I worked as a post-doctoral researcher in the Smart group from 2022-2023.

My previous position in Associate Professor Duncan Sparrow's group (2018-2022) investigated how other environmental exposures such as maternal iron deficiency can alter heart development and lead to conditions such as congenital heart defects. This project on iron deficiency has been published in Nature Communications.

My recent side project on understanding placental arterio-venous formation and malfunction in embryos with congenital heart defects has recently published in Frontiers in Genetics in a special issue "Cellular and Molecular Mechanisms of Heart Development: Implications for Congenital Heart Disease."