Beatrice completed her PhD in Prof Martin Scanlon’s group.

She also had the opportunity to present her Three Minute Thesis (3MT) to the Chief Investigators of the ARC CFBD, the ARC CEO Professor Sue Thomas, Monash Provost Professor Marc Parlange and the Hon. Kevin Andrews.

Research Overview

With a research focus on the development of 53BP1 inhibitors to target BRCA-1 breast cancer, Beatrice is using the Rapid Elaboration of Fragments into Leads (REFiL) workflow to expedite the discovery of these inhibitors.

“I enjoy the range of skills that come with this type of drug discovery project – from the synthesis of diverse compound libraries which could be contained in 96 well plates, to the testing of these by Off-Rate screening by SPR,” she says.

Motivated by curiosity Beatrice plans to continue researching the application of fragments to other diseases: “I’d like to continue to design more widely applicable techniques that could be used in the FBDD pipeline, or to broaden the scope of existing techniques.”

Education

Beatrice began her tertiary education with an undergraduate degree in Arts/Science but after realizing her love of chemistry, transitioned into a Bachelor of Pharmaceutical Sciences, majoring in Medicinal Chemistry. After taking a range of summer research projects during her undergraduate studies, Beatrice focused on synthetic medicinal chemistry and Fragment Based Drug Discovery during her honours year.

Awards

• Most outstanding Oral presentation – FBDD-DU &14^th annual graduate research symposium (2019)
• EMBL Australia Student Travel Fellowship – 21^st EMBL PhD Symposium in Germany (2019)
• 3MT Asia Pacific Top 10 Finalist (2019)
• 2020 Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting Monash Nominee (2019)
• Monash University Summer Research Scholarship (2015 – 2016)
• Cancer Therapeutics Australia CRC Summer Research Scholarship (2014 – 2015)
• Monash University Excellence and Equity Scholarship (2012 – 2015)