I head the Tumour Microenvironment Laboratory at the Centre for Cancer Biology, formed by an alliance between SA Pathology and Adelaide University, and the Cancer Mechanotherapies Laboratory at the Basil Hetzel Institute for Translational Health Research, where I am the Australian Breast Cancer Research Fellow, funded by The Hospital Research Foundation Group. Our research focuses on understanding the tumour microenvironment, the support structure that cancers build around themselves. Current cancer therapies rely heavily on directly targeting aberrant tumour cell behaviour resulting from genetic mutations. Such approaches frequently elicit therapy resistance owing the ability of tumour cells to acquire further mutations enabling them to evade therapy. However, tumours are critically dependent upon their stromal cell component, which are populated by genetically normal cells. Targeting stromal cell behaviour can reduce the potential for therapy resistance, as stromal cells are typically genetically stable. Our research seeks to identify the mechanisms by which tumours remodel their microenvironments to promote tumour progression, with a view to uncovering new approaches to interfering with this process.
I completed my Bachelor’s degree with Honours in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Australian National University, Canberra. I then moved to Melbourne to conduct Ph.D. research at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, in the laboratory of Prof. Matthias Ernst. Here I studied the function of DNA methyltransferase dysregulation in intestinal cancers, showing that increased DNA methyltransferase activity has a causal role in tumour progression.
Moving to the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research, UK in 2006 to join the laboratory of Prof. Michael Olson as a postdoctoral scientist, I began working on the cytoskeletal signalling pathways that have absorbed my interest over the past 10 years, and laid the foundation for my current research programme. During this time, I established novel models of conditionally active cytoskeletal signalling to demonstrate that these pathways regulate tissue-level mechanical changes that promote tumour growth and progression.
In 2011, I won a Florey Fellowship to move back to Australia and in 2012 set up the Tumour Microenvironment Laboratory at the Centre for Cancer Biology with funding from a National Health and Medical Research Council New Investigator grant. I was awarded an ARC Future Fellowship in 2012.