Professor Leonie Ashman - Selected publications

Wright, M.D., Geary, S.M., Fitter, S., Moseley, G., Lau, L.-M., Sheng, K.-C., Apostolopolous, V., Stanley, E., Jackson, D.E. and Ashman, L.K. Characterisation of mice lacking the tetraspanin superfamily member CD151. Mol Cell Biol  24: 5978-5988, 2004.

I initiated the project and obtained the funding. Approximately 50% of the work was carried out in my laboratory and I wrote most of the paper. This paper describes the production and characterisation of mice lacking the cell surface protein CD151.  They are being used in national and international collaborations to study the role of CD151 in epidermal wound healing, tumour invasion and metastasis.

Ang, J., Lijovic M., Ashman, L.K., Kan, K. and Frauman, A.G., CD151 protein expression, not histological grading, predicts the outcome of low grade primary prostate cancer: a new prognostic indicator? Biomarkers & Prevention 13:1717-1721, 2004.

Dr Frauman (Austin Hospital, Melbourne) was studying another tetraspanin protein, CD9, in prostate cancer.  I persuaded him that he should also investigate CD151 and provided the reagents to do this. I assisted with writing the paper. The study showed that CD151 expression is superior to currently used biomarkers for predicting patient outcome in prostate cancer. It forms the basis of a planned new collaboration with Prof Jim Denham (Mater Hospital) to study the prognostic value of CD151 in the context of controlled clinical trials in prostate cancer.

Ferrao, P.T., Frost, M.J., Siah, S-P and Ashman, L.K., Overexpression of P-glycoprotein in K562 cells does not confer resistance to the growth inhibitory effects of Imatinib (STI571) in vitro. Blood 102:4499-503, 2003.

Work carried out entirely by my group under my guidance. Studies analysing the mechanism of resistance to a kinase-inhibitory drug used to treat chronic myeloid leukaemia. Showed in a controlled system that, contrary to popular expectation, a drug-efflux pump P-glycoprotein is not an effective mediator of resistance to this drug.

Cullinane, C., Dorrow, D.S., Kansara, M., Conus, N., Binns, D., Hicks, R.J., Ashman, L.K., McArthur, G.A. and Thomas, D.M. An in vivo model exploiting metabolic response as a biomarker for targeted drug development. Cancer Res 65:9633-6, 2005.

Provided the cell lines used in the study and participated in writing the paper. This collaboration with Dr Thomas’ group (Peter MacCallum Cancer Institute, Melbourne) flowed directly from our earlier work (Frost MJ et al (2002) Mol Cancer Ther. 1:1115-1124; IF 5.24; cit 44) showing that different mutant forms of the receptor tyrosine kinase, c-KIT differ markedly in their sensitivity to a clinically important kinase-inhibitory drug. The current study developed an in vivo preclinical model system for the evaluation of such drugs.

Esteem factors

  • Career Research Appointments: Inaugural Rotary Peter Nelson Leukaemia Research Fellow, Adelaide University, 1979-1992; NHMRC Senior Research Fellow, Hanson Centre for Cancer Research, Adelaide 1992-1999; NHMRC Principal Research Fellow, Hanson Centre 2000-2001; Univ of Newcastle 2002-2010.
  • International Union for Cancer Control (UICC) Yamagiwa-Yoshida International Study Fellowship, 1999.
  • Publications (all peer-reviewed): Career total of 120 primary research papers, 11 review articles and 10 full conference papers. At least 12 of these have >100 citations. One, the first identification and characterisation of a mutant form of c-KIT in a cancer cell line has been cited 383 times (Furitsu T et al, J Clin. Invest. 92:1736-1744, 1993).
  • Member of NHMRC National Panels: NHMRC Fellowships Advisory panel A, 2000, 2001; NHMRC Grant Review Panel (Cell Biology), 2005, 2006.
  • Invited speaker and session chair at Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) Summer Conferences on Tetraspanins Snowmass, CO 2000; Tucson, AZ 2002; Georgia, 2004 and Tucson, AZ 2006.