“As a dad, I want to be there for Clancy.”

The first time Matt held his baby, Clancy, all he wanted was to keep his son safe. He wanted a world where people would no longer be struck down, without warning, by the deadly hidden threat that almost claimed his own life.

Will you join the fight against heart disease?

Matt was just 40 when his life changed forever. An elite athlete in peak physical condition, he was the last person anyone expected to be rushed to hospital for life-saving emergency surgery.

I was doing my usual 15 km run to work when I felt this shotgun sensation in my chest. Instantly I knew something bad had happened.

Matt, Matt

Join the fight against heart disease

Matt was experiencing a very serious heart attack, caused by a build-up of plaque on the inside of his heart’s arteries. When enough of these plaques become ‘unstable’, they can rupture and form a clot that blocks blood flow to the heart, causing a heart attack.

Will you support critical research to help protect people like Matt?

This type of heart attack can strike without warning, at any time and any age. The impact can be devastating, putting an abrupt end to someone’s hopes and dreams for the future, and all too often claiming a precious life.

It’s crucial that we develop safe, reliable and cost-effective ways to detect and stabilise unstable plaque.

Will you help put an end to this deadly hidden threat forever?

Help protect people like Matt

Professor Roland Stocker and his team at the Heart Research Institute are working on creating a world-first: a novel diagnostic test to help identify and potentially treat people who are at high risk of a heart attack due to the presence of unstable plaque. They have developed an “early warning system” that not only detects when someone is at high risk of a heart attack, it highlights the area where unstable plaque is present.

The next stage of the project is to try to stabilise the plaque to prevent it causing a heart attack. The hope is to develop a drug for high-risk heart attack patients that will prevent the plaque from rupturing and hence the formation of blood clots in the first place.

Will you help develop treatments to put an end to heart disease?

This research is well advanced and could soon be saving thousands of lives every year, but we need support to deliver the next phases of both the test and the treatment development.

It’s something that Matt is incredibly excited about.

“I think this type of research and the technology it will give us will be really important for creating a pathway for people who do know that they are potentially at risk of heart attack.”