About STaR Centre

Our Mission

To improve the outcomes of patients with surgical diseases, within New Zealand and beyond, through excellent research, technology and collaboration.

Our Aspirations

• To establish a highly integrated multi-disciplinary Centre by bringing together four established and successful research groups to grow surgical and translational research.
• To ensure a highly productive environment that stimulates research through the ‘bench-to-bedside-to-community’ continuum (translation and implementation).
• To create a profile to help leverage and augment the University’s investment by securing strategic industry partners and public/philanthropic funding.

 

What makes STaR Centre Unique

• Focus on surgical disease
• Commitment to bench-to-bedside translational research
• Cross-disciplinary expertise – basic, clinical, engineering and population science
• University / Hospital partnership (Auckland Academic Health Alliance)
• Industry partnerships
• Spans inception to commercialization
• Investigator initiated and company sponsored clinical research

Surgical disease encompasses many non-communicable diseases and cancers, an estimated 30% of the global burden of disease can be attributed to surgically treatable conditions.

Historically considered a craft, surgery is now properly considered an applied science alongside other medical sciences. Like all medical sciences, surgery is being revolutionised by emerging technologies.

The tools by which physical interventions are made on human tissue, once limited to simple manual instruments, now include an array of devices that use laser, ultrasound, radiation, and thermal methods. Diagnostic probes are becoming more sophisticated.  And of course, with the rise of second generation robotics, it is not always a human surgeon who is directly wielding the instrument or probe.

The fundamental scientific underpinnings of surgery are being revolutionised as we gain insight into the causes of disease on a genomic and molecular level.  One of the inherent challenges of conducting research by surgeons is the significant demands of surgical practice itself. The University of Auckland’s Department of Surgery has taken up these challenges in academic surgery and has made it a priority to train surgeon-scientists and future leaders in surgery.

Our model – integrating New Zealand’s leading research units and surgical laboratories within the Schools of Biological Sciences and Biomedical Sciences delivers world leading research impact to communities, clinical services and industry.