Marianna Volpert

Dr Volpert obtained her PhD degree from the University of Melbourne in 2014, where her research focused on identifying molecular determinants of prostate cancer invasiveness. This work led to a Novartis Junior Scientist Award for outstanding oral presentation by a junior member of the Endocrine Society of Australia, as well as the Sydney Parker Smith Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from the Cancer Council Victoria (2014). In 2015, Dr Volpert joined the APCRC-Q to investigate the role of Neuropilin-1 (NRP1) in promoting prostate cancer metastasis and therapy resistance, where she was awarded the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia John Mills Young Investigator Award. She has expanded her studies into the breast cancer field and is focused on identifying novel, clinically actionable targets in specific molecular subtypes of triple-negative breast cancer, which currently have few durable targeted therapies. These studies have led to industry collaboration and testing of therapeutic inhibitors in clinically-relevant prostate and breast cancer models. Dr Volpert has extensive experience conducting in vivo preclinical therapeutic trials and has a particular interest in development and implementation of pre-clinical models that faithfully recapitulate key aspects of tumour molecular and therapy-resistant subtypes and tumour microenvironment characteristics. Collectively, her research has led to over $250k in independent funding (PI/CI-A), and over the past 5 years has formed the basis of successful grant applications totaling over $1.7M awarded to her supervisors.

Volpert M *, Furic L *^¥, Hu J, O’Connor AE, Rebello RJ, Keerthikumar S, Evans J, Merriner DJ, Pedersen J, Risbridger G, McIntyre P, O’Bryan MK^¥. Cysteine-rich secretory protein 3 expression drives prostate cancer invasion and progression. Endocr Relat Cancer 27, 415-430 (2020).  *These authors contributed equally to this manuscript.

Yeh MC, Tse B, Fletcher NL, Houston ZH, Lund M, Volpert M, Stewart C, Sokolowski K, Jeet V, Thurecht KJ, Campbell DH, Walsh BJ, Nelson CC & Russell PJ. Targeted beta therapy of prostate cancer with 177Lu-labelled Miltuximab® antibody against glypican-1 (GPC-1). European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging Research, 10, 46 (2020).

Lim S, Kierzek M, O’Connor AE, Brenker C, Merriner DJ, Okuda H, Volpert M, Gaikwad A, Bianco D, Potter D, Prabhakar R, Strunker T & O’Bryan MK. CRISP2 is a regulator of multiple aspects of sperm function and male fertility. Endocrinology, 160, 915-924 (2019).

Tse B *, Volpert M *, Ratther E, Stylianou N, Nouri M, McGowan K, Lehman M, McPherson S, Roshan-Moniri M, Butler M, Caradec J, Gregory-Evans C, McGovern J, Das R, Takhar M, Erho N, Alshalafa M, Davicioni E, Schaeffer E, Jenkins R, Ross A, Karnes R, Den R, Fazli L, Gregory P, Gleave ME, Williams ED, Rennie PS, Buttyan R, Gunter J, Selth L, Russell PJ, Nelson C & Hollier BG. Neuropilin-1 is upregulated in the adaptive response of prostate tumors to androgen-targeted therapies and is prognostic of metastatic progression and patient mortality. Oncogene, 15;36(24):3417-3427 (2017). *These authors contributed equally to this manuscript.

Evans J, D’Sylva R, Volpert M, Jamsai D, Merriner DJ, Nie G, Salamonsen LA & O’Bryan MK. Endometrial CRISP3 is regulated throughout the mouse estrous and human menstrual cycle and facilitates adhesion and proliferation of endometrial epithelial cells. Biol Reprod, 92(4): p. 99 (2015).

Volpert M, Mangum JE, Jamsai D, D’Sylva R, O’Bryan MK &McIntyre P. Eukaryotic expression, purification and structure/function analysis of native, recombinant CRISP3 from human and mouse. Sci Rep, 4: p. 4217 (2014).

More can be viewed at Pubmed.

Primary supervisor, Mr Yu Hin Tang (PhD candidate)

Associate supervisor, Ms Qiuhua Hu (PhD candidate)

Primary supervisor, Ms Layla-Rose Lynam (MPhil candidate)