Professor Julian Paton wins Gluckman Medal

Professor Julian Paton has won the Gluckman Medal for 2024 for his exceptional contributions to heart research and pioneering development of evidence-based therapies.

The Gluckman Medal is one of the University’s premier medical research awards and recognises Professor Paton's consistent outstanding research contributions in the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences (FMHS).

“Professor Paton’s research into heart disease and treatment is groundbreaking, award-winning and world-class,” says FMHS dean Professor Warwick Bagg.

Paton has trained 26 doctorate students, published more than 450 papers and had 24,600 citations among other notable achievements.

“Julian has made seminal contributions to the understanding of heart disease and heart failure and, more recently, has applied his discoveries to the development of an innovative pacemaker to be used to reverse the process of heart failure,” says Professor John Fraser, in his nomination.

The novel pacemaker, which is attracting international interest and has led to Paton’s spinout company, Ceryx Medical, has been developed from Paton’s research in Bristol and Auckland. The pacemaker is designed to restore natural pacing variability to the failing heart.

The idea was conceived in New Zealand while on sabbatical in 2010 and has now progressed to first-in-human trials in patients at Auckland and Waikato hospitals.

“Since his arrival in 2017, Julian and his colleagues have tested the device in sheep and find that it defies all known forms of therapy by reversing heart failure for the first time,” Fraser says.

“It has the potential to change the way pacemakers operate and have global impact.”

Paton was recruited to Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland in 2017 under a Vice-Chancellor’s strategic appointment.

As Dean at that time, Professor John Fraser set some lofty goals for the newcomer, including establishing a national Centre of Heart Research Excellence and attaining a Health Research Council (HRC) programme grant. Paton achieved both within a few years of starting at the University.

In 2021, Paton led a nationwide funding application that, uniquely, had strong support from Māori and Pacific researchers and led to establishment of the CoRE, Pūtahi Manawa. He remains one of the co-directors of this new Centre of Research Excellence (CoRE), called Pūtahi Manawa, which aims to improve heart health equity in Aotearoa New Zealand.

The centre’s community engagement, outreach and education approaches are models that are now being adopted across the university and the country.
Paton attained the HRC grant for a programme of work from 2019 to 2025 that has produced high-profile papers, including in Nature and the American Heart Association’s journals.

Among his other achievements, Paton led the development of a faculty heart research centre, Manaaki Manawa, in 2019, which was the first faculty centre to be based on an equity partnership with Māori and the first centre for heart research at the university. This built the foundation that was pivotal for securing the new CoRE.

Paton has accrued, as principal investigator (PI) or co-PI, two Marsden grants, five HRC grants, two Auckland Medical Research Foundation grants, three UK Medical Research Council grants and sponsored four successful New Zealand fellowships.

Since 2023, he has given more than 25 public lectures raise awareness of the exciting heart research at Manaaki Manawa. In 2020, he was made a fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi and this year won the Gaston Bauer prize from the Cardiology Society of Australia and New Zealand.