Professor Julie McMullen PhD

Prof Julie McMullen is Deputy Director & Director of Research at the Heart Research Institute (HRI) and also leads the Heart Muscle Group. She is recognised internationally for research which has defined the molecular distinction between physiological and pathological heart growth (cardiac hypertrophy) in preclinical models of health and disease.

Her research aims to advance understanding of cardiovascular conditions such as heart failure at a molecular level to enhance treatments for this condition, which is rapidly increasing in Australia and globally.

She is fascinated by the idea that the heart enlarges in elite athletes or those who exercise a lot, and this heart growth is good. Conversely, the heart also enlarges in people with heart disease or heart failure, but this heart growth is bad. Her work aims to help define which genes are responsible for good or bad heart growth. She discovered that a signalling pathway activated with exercise (ie, IGF1-PI3K pathway) was critical for physiological hypertrophy (eg, athlete’s heart) but not pathological hypertrophy (eg, setting of hypertension). She has over 15 years' experience in the generation and characterisation of genetic and surgical preclinical models of cardiac hypertrophy and heart failure, and expertise related to IGF1-PI3K signalling in the heart. She believes activating this pathway in a setting of heart failure could provide a promising therapeutic strategy for this condition.

More recently she has developed novel therapies based on her findings in genetic mouse models involving adeno-associated virus (AAV) technology, RNA interference approaches, and small molecules. Other research interests include atrial fibrillation and cardiotoxicity.

Prof McMullen graduated from the School of Physiology and Pharmacology at the University of New South Wales. She then trained as a Cardiology Research Fellow at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre and Harvard Medical School in Boston. During this time, she gained experience generating and characterising cardiac specific transgenic mice. In 2005, Prof McMullen established her own laboratory at the Baker Heart & Diabetes Institute. Her lab has published in journals including PNAS, Circulation-Heart Failure, Nature Communications, Cell Reports, and Nature Cardiovascular Research.

Prof McMullen has been on the Executive council of the International Society for Heart Research-Australasian Section, and serves on a number of journal editorial boards (Clinical Science, JMCC-Plus, Am J Physiol-Heart and Circulatory Physiology, CEPP, Current Opinion in Physiology). She was recently appointed as an Associate Editor of a new Nature Portfolio Journal-NPJ-Cardiovascular Health. She is also a Fellow of the American Heart Association and International Society for Heart Research.