Craig McFarlane

Associate Professor Craig McFarlane is a teaching and research academic in the discipline Biomedical Sciences and Molecular Biology in the College of Medicine and Dentistry. He completed his PhD in 2007 in New Zealand and has undertaken postdoctoral studies at AgResearch in New Zealand and Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. As a principal investigator he established a research group in the Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences, an Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) institute. He has published his research in several highly ranked international journals, including: Nature Communications, PLOS Biology, Diabetes, Journal of Biological Chemistry, Cell Research and International Journal of Obesity. A/Prof. McFarlane moved to Australia in 2017 to take up his new role in James Cook University and his current research focuses on understanding mechanisms that regulate skeletal muscle growth, maintenance and repair in the context of cardiovascular disease and sarcopenia, which is the progressive loss of muscle mass and function that occurs due to chronic illness and aging. A/Prof. McFarlane is further interested in the potential of cellular agriculture for developing sustainable food and health products as well as cosmetics and is leveraging his extensive experience in muscle stem cell biology to establish important starter cell lines and associated reagents for the burgeoning cultivated meat and cellular agriculture industries. To this end A/Prof. McFarlane, along with two co-founders has established the biotech startup company Infinite Bioworks (https://www.infinitebioworks.com/)

Specialities

Associate Professor McFarlane has extensive experience in skeletal muscle and adipose primary cell culture and the development of in vitro cell culture models and pre-clinical mouse models to study and identify mechanisms that control muscle wasting associated with chronic diseases. In addition, he has undertaken studies to identify genetic and epigenetic pathways that transduce the adverse effect of high caloric diet nutrition on the development of insulin resistance in skeletal muscle. He has also identified mechanisms through which skeletal muscle can influence the function of other tissues in the body, including white adipose tissue, to regulate whole body energy expenditure and utilisation.