DrBianca Bernardo

Dr Bernardo is a Senior Research Fellow at Deakin University in the School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences. She specialises in cardiac physiology and preclinical development of small molecule therapeutics for the treatment of the failing heart. Dr Bernardo was awarded her PhD from the University of Melbourne in 2009, where she studied key genetic and biological mechanisms of skeletal development and disease at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. She then joined the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, focusing on preclinical testing of microRNAs and other small molecules, such as tilorone, as novel treatments for heart failure. One of her notable achievements was demonstrating that a microRNA-based drug could attenuate pathological remodelling and improve cardiac function in mice with preexisting pathological hypertrophy and dysfunction (PNAS 2012). This was the first study to inhibit an entire microRNA seed family in established heart disease. Her microRNA discoveries led to prestigious awards, including the Ralph Reader Prize (Basic Science), Postdoctoral Publication Awards (ISHR, AuPS), the highest HOPE Award (Japan - JSPS) and the inaugural Alice Baker and Eleanor Shaw Fellowship (Baker Institute) in recognition of her research excellence. In 2024, Dr Bernardo was recruited to Deakin University, where her research now focuses on identifying and developing mitochondrial non-coding RNAs as novel drug targets for cardiometabolic diseases. Her work has been supported by project grants from Diabetes Australia, Sir Edward Dunlop Medical Research Foundation and Perpetual. Dr Bernardo has expanded her research portfolio to include the development of AAV-based therapeutic strategies for the treatment of motor neurone disease, as well as investigating the impact of MND on the heart.