Department of Surgery - Monash Medical Centre

News and Events

Dr Yi Chen, a PhD student in the Department of Surgery at Southern Clinical School and MIMR, recently won the TAG Medical Young Achievers Award for the best paper by a cardiothoracic surgery trainee. The TAG Medical Young Achievers Award has been in place for 15 years to date. “I feel it is an honour to have my work recognised at the meeting,” said Dr Chen.

Dr Chen won the Award for his presentation entitled "Follistatin, an activin binding protein, reduces infarct size in myocardial reperfusion injury" at the Annual Scientific Meeting of the Australasian Society of Cardiac and Thoracic Surgeons, held in Noosa, Queensland at the Sheraton Resort, from November 5-8, 2009.

The presentation was based on work carried out by Dr Chen in collaboration with the Department of Surgery, University of Washington in Seattle and Baker IDI in Melbourne. Dr Chen looked at the role of a fairly recently characterised cytokine activin A and its binding protein follistatin in ischemia reperfusion injury of the heart. By using a m ouse model, he found that follistatin, by binding to activin A, could reduce tissue damage after ischemia reperfusion. This finding has potential application in clinical practice as patients undergoing cardiac surgery all sustain ischemia reperfusion injury to a certain degree.

Dr Chen explained “I am a cardiothoracic trainee based at MMC and have deferred from my clinical training to complete a PhD, examining the role of activin A and follistatin in relation to cardiac surgery. I am in my second year and hoping to finish by next year”.