Jean Berthelet
I am a Senior Post Doctoral Fellow at the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute specialising in cancer researcher, with over twelve years of experience dedicated to understanding cancer progression and advancing therapeutic strategies. My work spans multiple aspects of cancer biology, from molecular mechanisms to precision medicine, with a particular focus on metastasis, heterogeneity, and drug resistance.
I began my research career in France, where I completed my PhD at the University of Burgundy in 2014 under the supervision of Dr. Laurence Dubrez at INSERM. My doctoral research explored the roles of Inhibitor of Apoptosis Proteins (IAPs) and RhoGTPases in oncology, particularly their involvement in transcriptional regulation and cytoskeletal remodelling during metastasis.
Following my PhD, I joined the lab of Prof. Krishna Rajalingam at the University Medical Centre in Mainz, Germany, for a postdoctoral fellowship. There, I investigated the regulation of caspase-2 by the inhibitor API5. In parallel, I contributed to a precision medicine initiative focused on Papillary Thyroid Cancer, analysing patient-derived samples. This work, supported by the DKTK and Genentech, led to the discovery of a novel gene fusion that has since informed new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches in this cancer type.
In 2017, I relocated to Australia to join the lab of Prof. Delphine Merino at the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute. My current research focuses on breast cancer heterogeneity and metastasis. I was involved in developing an optical barcoding strategy to track cancer cell clones over time and across different microenvironments, which has provided new insights into cancer dynamics and clonal evolution. Additionally, I have worked on predicting drug responses in pre-clinical models, processing breast cancer patient samples, utilising patient-derived xenografts, and applying advanced techniques such as RNA sequencing and single-cell RNA sequencing, and 3D imaging.
Abstracts this author is presenting: