Christine Hawkins

Christine Hawkins undertook research for her PhD at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research with an interest in the molecular pathways that regulate cell survival and death. After returning from postdoctoral studies at the California Institute of Technology in 1999, she joined the RCH and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) where she headed the apoptosis laboratory.

Apoptosis is the process whereby cells kill themselves when they sense that there is something wrong with them.  Many cancers arise from the failure of this process.  Christine’s work related particularly to brain tumours and the failure of some chemotherapeutic agents that stimulate apoptosis. While at the MCRI Christine was involved in the TRAIL trial for which CIKA commenced funding in 2005. You can read her report on this by clicking here.

In 2006 she joined the La Trobe University Institute for Molecular Science where she has been focussing on childhood cancers such as osteosarcoma.