The Best of the AACR Journals Collection: Author Profiles

Q: What is your primary area of study/research?
A: My research is mainly focused on the fields of cell stress and cell death. Cellular stress responses are mechanisms activated by cells in response to stressful stimuli and are crucial in determining cell fate in response to the stress. My main research objectives are to uncover the molecular signalling pathways activated during endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress and unfolded protein response (UPR) and to understand the cross-talk between stress response pathways and cell death machinery, and how these processes contribute to human diseases. Currently my lab is working on:

• Delineating ER stress signalling in health and disease
• Investigating the role of IRE1, a protein that is important in altering gene expression as a response to endoplasmic reticulum-based stress signals and one of three major ER stress sensors in breast cancer, and targeting IRE1 in pre-clinical models of breast cancer
• Investigating how UPR controls cell death and survival and how it is regulated by heat shock proteins
• Understanding how cell stress responses influence pro-inflammatory processes and the tumour microenvironment in cancer.

My translational interests lie in identifying and validating new ER stress and cell death related targets for drug discovery efforts. I aim to develop approaches and compounds that have therapeutic potential for use in a number of different cancers (e.g. breast cancer, colorectal, paediatric cancers).

Q: What influenced your decision to embark on a research career?
A: I have always been fascinated by life science. The way scientists ask questions and plan experiments to address these questions. As a teenager, I was more interested in scientific books, books describing major advances in science and how simple questions directed experiments leading to major discoveries that changed human life. My university education, and my mentors’ passion for science, gave me enthusiasm for research and I spent several summers working in research laboratories. In the final year of my bachelor’s degree I knew I wanted to pursue a career as a laboratory scientist, working on cancer cell biology. I thought that the more we can understand the cancer cell, the better we can fight it. I still believe this is true.

Q; What excites you most about your research area?
A: Throughout my scientific career, I have worked on cellular stress and in particular, stress-induced cell death. Stress-induced cell death, in particular the role of endoplasmic reticulum in sensing stress. Some of the most exciting things about this research area for me are being able to ask fundamental scientific questions pertaining to ER stress signaling, its role in the life/death decisions that a cell makes, designing experiments to address these questions and the knowledge that this has implications for human disease. I also find it fascinating how the events in an organelle in the cell can have an impact on the whole cell, the microenvironment in which it lives and on surrounding cells. And of course, seeing how bench work can be translated into the clinic is very exciting.

Q: What are your hobbies or passions outside of work?
A: Community service, keeping tropical fish, classical music, documentaries about history and nature, action movies.