About Us

The Winston Foundation is an Australian not-for-profit organisation leading innovative scientific research programs to improve our understanding and application of animal genetics.

GENETICS.... FOR ANIMALS?

We tend to think of assisted reproduction in the human context of in vitro fertilization (IVF), or sperm or egg donation, to help people conceive the healthy baby they long for. But assisted reproduction has also been used in animal breeding since the 15th century to improve the quality of livestock, pet or service animal breeds, or more recently, to save endangered animal species through captive breeding programs.

Scientific developments in recent years now mean that assisted reproductive techniques and genetic technologies are safer, more advanced and more reliable than ever before.

Advancing genetic and reproductive technologies for animals could have far-reaching benefits for society. We could help to save critically endangered species, or improve the breeding success rate and traits for guide dogs for the blind, or sniffer dogs for the police or border force. By learning more about genetic diseases in animals, we might find ways to treat or cure them, or help ensure that animals are free from genetic defects.

OUR PROJECTS

As The Winston Foundation grows, we hope to lead ground-breaking animal genetics research projects in a number of different areas. To begin with, our focus is on developing and improving assisted reproductive technologies for dogs, with a focus on human assistance dogs.

Assistance dogs can be a blind person's eyes, a deaf person's ears, or a disabled person's companion. Working canines are also an important part of any police, customs or anti-terrorism force, saving and protecting lives.

Assistance dogs are trained by the best dog trainers in Australia - but training alone does not make a successful working canine. Good genetics provides a solid foundation, leading to the ideal traits and animal temperaments on which service dog training programs can build.

OUR AIMS

With human assistance dogs at the forefront of our vision, The Winston Foundation aims to research and develop technologies to:

• Provide high quality and effective IVF for dogs
• Produce and store induced pluripotent stem cells from dogs
• Fertilise canine egg cells and derive embryonic stem cells
• Produce and store canine embryos
• Produce healthy clones with good hybrid vigour
• Enable genetic selection, and modification of embryos and embryonic stem cells.

Through this research, we aim to make dog breeding safer and more reliable, and to understand more about genetic traits, defects and diseases in animals. A beneficial side effect of our projects may be that we can translate some of our findings into improving and advancing genetics and reproductive research in humans and other animals.