Associate Professor David Godler
Associate Professor within the Department of Paediatrics, University of Melbourne, group leader of the Diagnosis and Development Laboratory at the Murdoch Children’s Research institute (MCRI)
David is an Associate Professor within the Department of Paediatrics, University of Melbourne, group leader of the Diagnosis and Development Laboratory at the Murdoch Children’s Research institute (MCRI), and the head of the Nucleic Acids Processing Facility of the MCRI-Biobank. He completed his PhD in 2007 at Monash University, then undertook post-doctoral studies on epigenetic disorders associated with chromosomal abnormalities and developmental delay in the laboratory of Professor Andy Choo, later appointed senior postdoctoral fellow at the Victorian Clinical Genetics Services (VCGS) and MCRI. In 2018, he was awarded a Next Generation Clinical Researchers Program - Career Development Fellowship, from the MRFF. His work centres on improved diagnosis, natural history studies and clinical trials for epigenetic disorders associated with intellectual disability and autism. Over the past 10 years his research program has resulted in development of the international infrastructure for recruitment, formal neuropsychological assessments and biospecimen collection from over 250 participants with Fragile X, Prader-Willi, Angelman and Chromosome 15 Duplication syndromes. He is currently a PI on the world’s largest Fragile X syndrome prevalence study conducted on 100,000 newborns (GNT1103389), and on another large project piloting combined newborn screening for Prader Willi, Angelman and dup15q syndromes on 75,000 newborns, supported by combined funding from the Foundation for Prader Willi research, Angelman Syndrome Foundation and the Victorian Medical Research Acceleration Fund, utilizing innovative genetic and genomic tools developed in his laboratory. David is also the PI on an industry supported (Actinogen Medical) XanaFX clinical trial testing safety and efficacy of a new drug targeting elevated cortisol levels in fragile X syndrome.
In 2020 he played a key role is establishing first Australian Chromosome 15 imprinting Disorders Biobank supported by competitive grant from Laurence G. and Jean E. Brown Charitable Trust through Perpetual’s IMPACT program to PWRFA and to David and his close collaborator Professor Amor (as principle investigators). In addition $25,000 from donors to the PWRFA was granted to both investigators, with $25,000 in kind contribution from David’s laboratory and $45,000 for a 2 year fellowship was awarded by Foundation for Angelman Syndrome to Dr Emma Baker – a talented postdoc within David’s group.