Alison Roennfeldt

Alison Roennfeldt

Higher Degree by Research Candidate

School of Biological Sciences

Faculty of Sciences, Engineering and Technology


In 2022 I commenced a PhD in biochemistry at The University of Adelaide, supervised by Associated Professor Dan Peet and Dr David Bersten and Professor Darryl Russell of the Robinson Research Institute. My project is focussed on deciphering the roles of hypoxia (low oxygen) signalling in ovulation and in general physiology through developing cell-based high throughput drug screening systems. I have general interests in developing reporter systems for drug and genetic based screening purposes and understanding cell transcriptional regulation.

My research is focussed on hypoxic (low oxygen signalling). The first half of my project builds on my honours research where I established a high throughput cell-based screening system to identify novel regulators of hypoxic signalling proteins. In 2022 we received an Australian Government subsidised grant from the National Drug Discovery Centre to complete a 300,000 compound small molecule screen using these systems where we aim to identify novel drugs which could be used to control hypoxic signalling and therefore have applications in treating metabolic disease or ischemic diseases such as stroke.

The second half of my project is focussed on investigating the role of hypoxia in the control of ovulation. There are two main hypoxic proteins called HIF-1 and HIF-2, with evidence suggesting they are involved in ovulation. However, their exact role and mechanism of regulation remain undefined. I am interested in determining what specifically regulates HIF-2 activity in ovulation and its interplay with the Progesterone Receptor, which is a key controlling protein of ovulation. Furthermore, I aim to determine the specific role of HIF-2 in ovulation and how this differs from the role of HIF-1.

  • Committee Memberships

    Date Role Committee Institution Country
    2023 - ongoing Member The Society for Reproductive Biology - Australia
    2022 - ongoing Board Member Adelaide Protein Group (APG) - Australia
    2022 - ongoing Member Australian Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology - Australia
  • Presentation

    Date Topic Presented at Institution Country
    2023 - 2023 Keystone Hypoxia short talk presentation Keystone Hypoxia: from basic mechanisms to emerging therapies. The University of Adelaide Ireland
    2022 - 2022 ComBio conference short talk presentation National ComBio conference, as a member of ASBMB The University of Adelaide Australia

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