Helen M. Palethorpe Hunter Cell Biology Meeting 2025

Helen M. Palethorpe

Dr Palethorpe is an early-mid career researcher with 6.5 years of postdoctoral and 13 years of accumulated experience in cancer research, with expertise in drug discovery and mechanisms of treatment resistance. Since mid-2022, in the Brain Cancer Research Laboratory at the Centre for Cancer Laboratory (CCB), Adelaide, Australia, led by Associate Professor Guillermo Gomez, Dr Palethorpe has optimised a method for the generation of patient-derived glioblastoma explant organoids (GBOs), establishing a biobank which recapitulates the genetics, histopathology and intratumoural heterogeneity observed in patients. Dr Palethorpe has used this clinically relevant resource to develop an animal-free pre-clinical drug screening platform for patient-personalised therapeutic testing. This research is in preprint in Cell Reports Methods and has led to several national and international collaborations, including the neurosurgical team and tumour bank at Flinders Medical Centre, experts in brain cancer and clinical trials (Professor Hui Gan at ONJCRI, Dr Kim Alexander at University of Sydney, Professor Bryan Day at QIMR), and pharmacists and chemists from Noxopharm, Sydney, Australia. The protocol is now being used as a reference for interstate labs to generate a national biobank funded by MRFF Brain Cancer Mission. Using this patient-personalised drug screening platform, in collaboration with Noxopharm, Dr Palethorpe has identified a lead compound with unique anti-tumoral properties that can be exploited for the development of new and more efficient treatments for glioblastoma. In December 2023, she was awarded a prestigious $200,000 Tour de Cure research grant to determine the compound’s mechanism of action, the outcomes of which will greatly contribute to end-product commercialisation. Dr Palethorpe obtained her PhD in 2018, with a Dean’s Commendation of Doctoral Thesis Excellence, for research investigating the role of fibroblasts and androgen signalling in oesophageal adenocarcinoma and prostate cancer, at the Basil Hetzel Institute in Adelaide. Prior to her current post-doctoral role in the Brain Cancer Research Laboratory, her post-doctoral experience in drug discovery encompasses the investigation of novel inhibitors of angiogenesis and breast cancer growth in the Solid Tumour Group, at the Basil Hetzel Institute, led by renowned oncologist Professor Tim Price (2017-2019), and the role of Quaking in regulating alternative splicing and epithelial-mesenchymal-transition (EMT) in prostate cancer progression and resistance, in the Gene Regulation in Cancer Laboratory (CCB), led by Professor Greg Goodall (2019-2021). Prior to her cancer research career, she had a diverse 15-year career in all areas of laboratory diagnostics, with positions in pathology centres locally and interstate and the last 6 of those years in cancer cytology.