Dr Gavin Chapman

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Gavin Chapman is a developmental biologist whose research is focused on understanding the causes of congenital anomalies. He obtained his PhD from Adelaide University under Professor Peter Rathjen, working on self-renewal of mouse embryonic stem cells. After graduating, Gavin was awarded a CJ Martin Fellowship to work with Professor Urban Lendahl at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, where he developed an interest in signal transduction and how it controls various aspects of mammalian embryogenesis.

Gavin returned to Australia in 2004 to work with Professor Sally Dunwoodie at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, where he studied how Notch signalling controls somitogenesis, the process by which precursors of the vertebrae are laid down during development. In 2006, Gavin was awarded a Cancer Institute NSW Early Career Development Fellowship to investigate the early events of Notch signal transduction.

More recently, Gavin has applied human genomics to identify genes, that when mutated cause congenital anomalies such as congenital heart disease. Gavin leads the Gene Discovery and Functional Genomics in congenital anomalies team comprising six researchers. The team is tasked with functionally testing hundreds of genetic variants identified in patients with congenital heart disease and other cardiovascular diseases. Gavin and the team use cell culture and mouse models to confirm that each variant alters function of the gene product in question, which is then used as evidence that it causes disease.