CATHERINE BURKE
DAVID GALLEGO-ORTEGA
David Gallego Ortega is Associate Professor and Director of the Single-Cell Technology Core at the School of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and IT at the University of Technology Sydney. He is also Group Leader at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research.
David has been supported by an Early Career Fellowship from the National Breast Cancer Foundation (2012-2015) and a Career Development Fellowship from the Cancer Institute NSW (2017-2019). Currently, David Gallego Ortega has been honoured with the preeminent Elaine Henry Fellowship (top #1 ranked fellow) from the National Breast Cancer Foundation (2021-2023).
David’s current research interests include tissue engineering, tissue on-a-chip and single-cell genomics applied to the field of tumour immunology, and development of high-resolution methods for cancer diagnosis and prognosis. Using a combination of in vivo and tissue-engineered ex vivo models, David’s research group uses single-cell resolution approaches to study developmental mechanisms of the mammary gland and the progression to breast cancer. The group’s research interest focuses on the mechanisms of communication between different cellular compartments within the tissue ecosystem, particularly inflammatory pathways driven by myeloid cells during mammary morphogenesis and metastatic cancer dissemination.
LANA McCLEMENTS
Dr McClements is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Life Sciences, Faculty of Science at the University of Technology Sydney where she leads a team of eight researchers (5 HDR students, 2 Honours students, and a Research Assistant). Prior to completing her PhD in Molecular Biology at Queen’s University Belfast, she worked as a clinical pharmacists for five years in London. Her research focuses on women’s health, particularly during pregnancy. She has discovered and patented two novel predictive and diagnostic biomarkers for a dangerous cardiovascular complication in pregnancy, preeclampsia. These biomarkers are being developed into new point of care or laboratory-based tests in collaboration with industry partners. She is also interested in developing a digital health platform for home monitoring of high-risk pregnancies. Her research utilises proteomics and genomics approaches for biomarker discovery to address unmet clinical need in early diagnosis of cardiovascular disease in pregnancy and beyond.