Citra Mattar ‘s field is fetal molecular therapy: utilizing stem cell transplantation and gene therapy in the developing fetus to correct or mitigate the effects of monogenic diseases to rescue the fetus from a life-threatening condition. This involves the sciences of stem cell biology, viral vector technology, applied genetics and molecular biology, immunology and haematology. She aspires to shepherd fetal stem cell therapies, and eventually gene therapy, into clinical practice.

Citra Mattar ‘s research group currently focuses on approaches that can be used to treat any major haemoglobinopathy, starting with the fetus and continuing postnatally with the infant if needed, namely understanding the reactions between the maternal immune system and allogenic cells transplanted into the fetus, and improving the engraftment ability of transplanted cells in the hyperplastic and aberrant thalassaemic bone marrow. Her objective is to understand the role of maternal immune trafficking in intrauterine haemopoetic stem cell transplantation (IUT) and utilize its potential as a clinically-translatable strategy.

Citra Mattar ‘s research also focuses on strategies to overcome the aberrant haemopoietic microenvironment in the thalassaemic bone marrow to enhance and improve the efficacy of donor cell engraftment through a process of donor HSC priming via co-culture with mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) prior to transplantation. This may be a safer way to overcome the significant microenvironmental barrier in thalassaemic recipients because it avoids genetic manipulation of donor cells and immunosuppression of the recipient.

Her research encompasses intrauterine in vivo gene therapy (IUGT) for haemophilia and thalassaemia, in which animal models of fetuses affected with these conditions are treated with transgenes packaged viral vectors with the aim of replacing the original abnormal gene with the new normal gene, to arrest or mitigate the damage in affected fetuses during development.

Saw, S. N., Low, J. Y. R., Ong, M. H. H., Poh, Y. W., Mattar, C. N. Z., Biswas, A., & Yap, C. H. (2018). Hyperelastic Mechanical Properties of Ex Vivo Normal and Intrauterine Growth Restricted Placenta. ANNALS OF BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING, 46(7), 1066-1077. doi:10.1007/s10439-018-2019-5.

Dighe, N. M., Tan, K. W., Tan, L. G., Shaw, S. S. W., Buckley, S. M. K., Sandikin, D., . . . Mattar, C. N. Z. (2018). A comparison of intrauterine hemopoietic cell transplantation and lentiviral gene transfer for the correction of severe beta-thalassemia in a HbbTh3/+ murine model. EXPERIMENTAL HEMATOLOGY, 62, 45-55. doi:10.1016/j.exphem.2018.03.006.

Saw, S. N., Poh, Y. W., Chia, D., Biswas, A., Mattar, C. N. Z., & Yap, C. H. (2018). Characterization of the hemodynamic wall shear stresses in human umbilical vessels from normal and intrauterine growth restricted pregnancies. Biomechanics and Modeling in Mechanobiology, 1-11. doi:10.1007/s10237-018-1017-8.

Wataganara, T., Gosavi, A., Nawapun, K., Vijayakumar, P. D., Phithakwatchara, N., Choolani, M., . . . Mattar, C. N. Z. (2018). Model surgical training: Skills acquisition in fetoscopic laser photocoagulation of monochorionic diamniotic twin placenta using realistic simulators. Journal of Visualized Experiments, 2018(133). doi:10.3791/57328.

Saw, S. N., Low, J. Y. R., Mattar, C. N. Z., Biswas, A., Chen, L., & Yap, C. H. (2018). MOTORIZING AND OPTIMIZING ULTRASOUND STRAIN ELASTOGRAPHY FOR DETECTION OF INTRAUTERINE GROWTH RESTRICTION PREGNANCIES. ULTRASOUND IN MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY, 44(3), 532-543. doi:10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2017.12.007.