Star Scientist of the Month - Dr Delfine Cheng

“One of my sisters is an engineer and the other one also works in science, so I guess you could say we were all brought up to love it.”

Dr Cheng completed a PhD in Medical Sciences at the University of Sydney in 2019, which saw her collaborate with Professor Diane Fatkin from the Institute’s Inherited Heart Disease Laboratory.

This led to her joining her current team at the Institute’s Mechanobiology lab.

"When I finished my PhD, Diane knew I was looking for a post-doc position, and Charles Cox just happened to be looking for someone to do some electron microscopy in his lab at the time, so she introduced us. It was luck and good timing."

Dr Charles Cox is the group leader of the Mechanobiology Laboratory at the Institute and says the luck was on the lab’s side.

“Delfine has been such a great addition to our team - she’s so easy to work with and is exceptional at practical problem-solving.

“As well as being a delight to work with, she has huge amount of talent in different microscopy techniques. She’s really taken our lab’s ability to do all sorts of microscopy to the next level,” Dr Cox adds.

“Delfine is an expert in electron microscopy of biological samples which is a high-end, high-resolution type of imaging technique that allows us to look at entities as small as proteins in a cell, for example.

“The particular skills that Delfine has brought here to the lab have really moved forward our understanding in two or three key projects. We didn’t have the ability to do that type of work here previously - in fact, I don’t think anyone in the Institute has been doing that type of work before Delfine,” says Dr Cox.

“But as well as bringing new skills to the Institute, Delfine has also developed critical skills while she’s been at the lab too.”

Despite only joining the lab in March 2019, Dr Cheng has already made a big impact

Dr Cheng says the team is getting close to being able to publish some of its findings.

“At the moment, one exciting project I’m working on is making microtissues. Traditionally, people study cells in two-dimensions just growing them on a plate - but more recently there’s a trend to look at how the cells behave in a three-dimensional way, like forming organoids or spheroids. So, what we’ve been doing is culturing cells in 3D so they look more like a tissue instead of a flat layer of cells.

“Previously we have been limited by how thick a cell sample we can look at but now, with the advances in imaging techniques, we can visualise through thicker samples. That means we can grow the tissues to be a bigger and better representation of tissue itself.

“We are also trying to understand how properties of the environment within in the heart can modify how the cells function or respond after stress or injury. This is particularly important after a heart attack where the environment changes drastically and the function of these cells becomes modified because you need to repair the damage that has been caused after a heart attack.

“I’m using different microscopy techniques to study these cellular changes. I’m looking at the interaction between the cell and the environment and how we can modify either or both to prevent the remodelling that often happens in most heart diseases, such as fibrosis,” she says.

Dr Cheng just loves her job

Dr Cheng says she is inspired daily by the people she works with at the Institute, and her great colleagues are one of the best parts of her job.

“There are such incredible minds around the place – it is very stimulating but can be challenging as well. Sometimes, I get a question and I think: ‘Wow, I really don’t know the answer to that, I’ll have to go and find out.’ But I guess that’s all part of the fun,” she says.