Michelle Papadimitriou

Having identified the role of GPR68, a G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) receptor as a regulator of fibrosis, Certa Therapeutics has built a platform to discover candidate drugs as potential treatments for multiple fibrotic diseases including serious and chronic conditions impacting the kidney, lung, skin, and heart. Some of my responsibilities include: - monitoring the progress and status of projects in pipeline; - co-ordinating project resources; - reviewing and preparing project proposals and reports; - providing administrative overview of company databases; - contributing to strategic discussions relating to pre-clinical and clinical development programs - managing and maintaining relationships with research team and collaborators, and external partners; - preparing documentation and presentations for internal and external stakeholders.

OccuRx is a Melbourne-based biopharmaceutical company focused on innovative therapeutic strategies for diseases associated with inflammation and fibrosis. Some my responsibilities include: - Managing project activities, progress and status in collaboration with research teams, CROs and consultants to ensure timeline and milestones are met - Managing project budgets and projections, preparing and reviewing project proposals and reports and communicating project activities to the management team on a regular basis - Preparing presentation materials to internal and external stakeholders - Facilitating compilation of nonclinical and clinical documentation to support successful ethics and regulatory submissions and patent filings - Maintaining and managing relationships with collaborators and external partners to generate robust data package to facilitate transition from preclinical to clinical development

Projects: - Gene expression profiling of innate immune cells from patients with systemic and organ-specific autoimmune disease. - Gene expression profiling of human monocyte-derived dendritc cells exposed to different tolerising conditions. - Analysis of the association between coxsackie B viral immune responses and the development of autoimmunity - Development of a laboratory database to store patient sample information and experimental data

As a research assistant I continued working on my PhD project while searching for job opportunities overseas.

I completed my PhD project in the Immunogenetics Lab under the supervision of Dr. Tom Brodnicki. The primary focus of this lab is to identify how sequence variation for certain genes affects the immune system and increases susceptibility to autoimmune and infectious disease. The focus of my PhD project was to determine how sequence variation for a novel gene (Apics/AK005651) affects dendritic cell function and autoimmune disease susceptibility using a combination of mouse models. This included characterisation of a Trig-deficient C57BL/6 mouse strain, analysis of inducible models of autoimmune disease and comparison of NOD and congenic mouse strains. Collectively, these analyses have indicated that Apics plays a role in the development of type 1 diabetes, and possibly other autoimmune diseases, by negatively attenuating the function of specific DC subsets. During my PhD I have also contributed to collaborative research projects, which has generated three-peer reviewed publications, and I have been active in a number of committees, including a committee that founded and organised a student conference for three consecutive years.

While employed as a research assistant I contributed to a research project that aimed to identify genes that contribute to type 1 diabetes pathogenesis using the Sleeping Beauty transposon system.

While employed as an undergraduate student I contributed to the analysis of insulitis development in genetically modified strains of NOD mice.

During my honours year I used a SOCS1 reporter mouse to analyse cytokine responses in the pancreas during the development of type 1 diabetes.