About
Dr Simon Foster is a Team Head at QIMR Berghofer where he leads the Cardiac Drug Discovery laboratory. After initially completing BA/BSc (Hons) degrees at the University of Melbourne, Simon completed his PhD in biomedical sciences at the University of Queensland in 2014. During his PhD, Simon focussed on novel aspects of cell signalling and G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) biology, discovering a new receptor signalling system in the heart.
Simon then relocated to Denmark, where he led a large project on orphan GPCRs, supported by consecutive Postdoctoral fellowships from Lundbeck Foundation and the Danish Council for Independent Research. Simon’s discoveries established multiple new pairings between computationally predicted human peptides and receptors, opening up entirely new fields of research. In 2018, he returned to Australia to work on chemokine receptors at Monash University, where he developed phosphoproteomics workflows to analyse global signalling networks. Simon then joined the Cardiac Bioengineering Group led by Professor James Hudson at QIMR Berghofer in late 2020, focussing on inflammation-induced cardiac dysfunction in human cardiac organoids.
Currently supported by a Bellberry-Viertel Fellowship and a National Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellowship, Simon is now combining his expertise in cardiovascular biology, cell signalling and drug discovery to discover new therapeutic targets for cardiac fibrosis and heart failure.
Research Skills
- Cell signalling and functional assays
- Phosphoproteomics
- Proteomics
- Human cardiac organoids
- Spatial proteomics
- Organ bath pharmacology
- Fluorescence and confocal microscopy
- RNA sequencing
Area of Interest
- Cardiac Fibrosis
- Heart failure
- Inflammation
- Pharmacology
- Drug discovery
- Cell signalling
- G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs)
Professional Associations
- Australasian Society of Clinical and Experimental Pharmacologists and Toxicologists (ASCEPT)
- International Society for Heart Research (ISHR)
- Australian Cardiovascular Alliance (ACvA)
- Queensland Cardiovascular Research Network (QCVRN)
- American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET)
Funding
- Bellberry-Viertel Senior Medical Research Fellowship, “New cardiovascular therapeutics targeting fibrosis” (CIA, 2024-28)
- NHMRC Ideas Grant, “Defining Chemotactic Signalling Networks to Identify New Anti-inflammatory Targets” (CIB, 2022-25)
- Heart Foundation Paul Korner Innovation Award (CIA, 2024)
- QIMR Berghofer Seed Funding Grant, “Getting to the heart of fibrotic signalling for new heart failure therapeutics” (CIA, 2023)
- Metro North Collaborative Research Grant, “The role of bromodomain and extra-terminal domain (BET) containing protein inhibitors in a translational model of sepsis-induced myocardial dysfunction” (CID, 2021-22)
- National Heart Foundation of Australia Vanguard Grant, “Decoding the G protein-coupled receptor signalling fingerprints in fibrosis to identify new therapeutic targets for heart failure” (CIB, 2021-22)
- Bioplatforms Australia ACvA Research Catalyst Program, “Decoding monocyte signalling networks” (CIA, 2020)
Gallery
Research Projects
Current Research Projects
New therapeutic targets for cardiac fibrosis.
Publications
Pokhrel R, Morgan AL, Robinson HR, Stone MJ, Foster SR. Unravelling G protein-coupled receptor signalling networks using global phosphoproteomics. Br J Pharmacol. 2024 Jul;181(14):2359-2370. doi: 10.1111/bph.16052. PMID: 36772927.
Voges HK, Foster SR, Reynolds L, Parker BL, Devilée L, Quaife-Ryan GA, Fortuna PRJ, Mathieson E, Fitzsimmons R, Lor M, Batho C, Reid J, Pocock M, Friedman CE, Mizikovsky D, Francois M, Palpant NJ, Needham EJ, Peralta M, Monte-Nieto GD, Jones LK, Smyth IM, Mehdiabadi NR, Bolk F, Janbandhu V, Yao E, Harvey RP, Chong JJH, Elliott DA, Stanley EG, Wiszniak S, Schwarz Q, James DE, Mills RJ, Porrello ER, Hudson JE. Vascular cells improve functionality of human cardiac organoids. Cell Rep. 2023 May 30;42(5):112322. doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2023.112322. PMID: 37105170.