Associate Professor Joan Heath

Joan Heath received her BA in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University, England and completed her PhD at the Strangeways Research Laboratory in Cambridge in 1985 in the field of cell-cell interactions in bone resorption. She then pursued post-doctoral positions in bone biology and osteoporosis research, firstly with Merck Sharp and Dohme Research Laboratories in West Point, Pennsylvania USA and secondly, in Australia at the St. Vincent’s Institute for Medical Research, Melbourne. She joined the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Melbourne in 1994 and at this point changed direction and embarked on cell and molecular biology studies of colon cancer. At this time she started to explore the molecular nature of the A33 antigen, an intestine and colon cancer-specific molecule that had already aroused considerable attention as a target for immunotherapeutic approaches to colon cancer treatment. Her interest in the A33 antibody/A33 antigen system has endured until the present time with current emphasis on the development of drug-loaded, A33 antibody-coated nanoparticles to bind to and kill colorectal cancer cells. In 1998, Joan Heath and Matthias Ernst became Joint-heads of the Colon Molecular and Cell Biology Laboratory at the Ludwig Institute. Together they have developed a number of loss-of-function and gain-of-function mouse models of colon cancer that take advantage of the intestine-specific regulatory elements of the A33 antigen gene locus. In parallel, Joan Heath has developed an independent gene discovery program in zebrafish to identify novel genes that may play a role in colon tumourigenesis. Her group recently identified four genes that are indispensable for vertebrate intestinal development and current work is directed towards determining whether the expression of these genes is disrupted in colon cancer. She has enjoyed uninterrupted project grant support from the NHMRC since 1998 and is an NHMRC Senior Research Fellow.