Dr. Liz Milward - Selected Publications

Milward EA, Trinder D, Wilcox CE, Britton RS, Ramm GA, Olynyk JK. Is HFE involved in increased hepcidin expression and hypoferremia in inflammation and anemia of chronic disease? Journal of Hepatology 2005; 43:9-10

Identified and focused international attention on an area of controversy important in understanding the regulation of body iron in anaemia of chronic diseases such as cancer and suggested new research directions for work in this area that are now being adopted by international researchers in the field.

Roy T, Milward EA. Genetic Regulation of the Matrix Metalloproteinases and Related Proteins. In: Matrix Metalloproteinases in the Central Nervous System (ed. K. Conant, P. Gottschall) Imperial College Press, London, 2005.

Senior author with 3 of my PhD students and other Australian and overseas researchers whom I have mentored on two chapters of this specialist book with leading international scientists in the field of brain metal-binding enzymes in health and brain disease with various other chapter senior authors (e.g. Stuart Lipton, Jeanine D’Armiento, Iain Campbell, Gary Rosenberg) having publications in Science, Cell, Nature, PNAS and Lancet, among other leading journals.

Broe M, Shepherd CE, Milward EA, Halliday GM. Relationship between DNA fragmentation, morphological changes and neuronal loss in Alzheimer’s disease and dementia with Lewy bodies. Acta Neuropathol (Berl.) 2001;101:616-24

This study was part of the successfully completed PhD of Dr Broe, whom I co-supervised, and provides a detailed quantitative description of certain important characteristic features of cell death in the brain of people with Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders. This is among the most detailed quantitative correlations of features of apoptotic cell death with neuron loss in dementia that have been conducted internationally and has been reviewed in an article in Trends In Molecular Medicine.

Milward EA, Zhang SC, Zhao M, Lundberg C, Ge B, Goetz BD, Duncan ID. Enhanced proliferation and directed migration of oligodendroglial progenitors co-grafted with growth factor-secreting cells. Glia 2000;32: 264-70.

This study was a pioneering ‘proof of principle’ study on means of controlling the behaviour of donor cells after transplantation into the spinal cord and was considered for patenting by the University of Wisconsin although ultimately judged to be too difficult to police. Has been cited in articles with high downstream impact including Brain Research Reviews and Lancet Neurology.

Esteem Factors

  • Grant and publication reviewer for national and international journals and funding bodies including the NHMRC and the Australian and U.S.A. Alzheimer’s Associations (ongoing).
  • Has been a Chief Investigator on three Australian National Health and Medical Research Council project grants on ageing-related brain disorders and presently primary Chief Investigator (CIA) on an ongoing NHMRC-funded genetic and clinical epidemiological study of the effects of iron on memory and other brain functions in ~1,000 older Western Australians
  • Invited plenary speaker, Special Symposium on Iron in Neurodegenerative Disease, 1st Int. Conference on Metals & the Brain, 2000, Padua, Italy
  • Awarded US government Extraordinary Ability O1 Visa for Neuroscience 1995 (peer advisory)