Capital Campaign

Cure Kids fundraising to date has raised over $1m towards the capital campaign for a new Cure Kids Chair in Child Health Research, Wellington. This is a collaboration with the Gillies McIndoe Research Institute in Wellington.

Internationally renowned Professor Swee Tan will be the first to hold this position – the fourth Cure Kids Chair of Child Health Research.  Professor Tan’s research is key to the advancement of understanding and intervention for diseases such as strawberry birthmarks and cancer, and its application to regenerative medicine.

Professor Tan and his team have discovered the gene responsible for the spontaneous regression and another gene for steroid-induced regression of strawberry birthmarks.  More recently he and his team have discovered stem cells responsible for the growth and regression of strawberry birthmarks.  They have also worked out the processes that control the transformation and maturation of these stem cells and this in turn led to the understanding of the dramatic effect of beta blockers (anti-hypertensive medications) on the growth of tumours such as strawberry birthmarks. 

Professor Tan and his team have also identified the pathways regulating the development of stem cells that are involved in normal tissue development and in cancer.  They believe that in the future the understanding of these processes will lead to development of novel treatments for cancer by controlling cancer stem cells.

In the field of regenerative medicine Professor Tan and his collaborators are interested in ‘engineering’ tissues such as cartilage, bone, muscle and blood vessels using the patient’s own stem cells to replace missing or damaged body parts.  This has application in tissue repair and treatment of coronary disease and diabetes.

While in angiogenesis - the formation of new blood vessels to promote wound healing and tissue regeneration, which also occurs abnormally in strawberry birthmarks, keloid scars and cancer growth and spreads, Professor Tan and his colleagues are working to understand the mechanisms regulating the processes involved.  Their recent discovery of the involvement of neural crest cells (a type of stem cells) opens an avenue of research that will lead to novel treatment for cancer and the restoration of blood supply to ischaemic limbs and heart without major surgery.