Rate My Professor Chantel Fitzsimmons

Dr. Chantel Fitzsimmons is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Biomedical Sciences and Pharmacy within the Faculty of Health and Medicine at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She obtained her PhD in Medical Genetics, Bachelor of Science in Biotechnology, and Bachelor of Biotechnology (Honours) from the University of Newcastle. Following her PhD, Dr. Fitzsimmons pursued postdoctoral positions in France. From April 2018 to September 2019, she served as a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Centre de Recherche en Cancérologie de Lyon, investigating a novel mechanism for activating the innate immune system via formulated LPS in liposomal delivery to evaluate effects on tumour growth and metastasis in rodent models of haematological malignancies. This work progressed to clinical trials, resulted in several patents, publications, and industry collaborations. Subsequently, from February 2020 to August 2021, she was a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Centre International de Recherche en Infectiologie (CIRI) in the Molecular Basis of Viral Pathogenicity Team, focusing on the dysregulation of immune responses by Ebola virus infection, identifying cellular partners for viral proteins and molecular mechanisms of pathogenicity to inform novel antiviral drug development.

Dr. Fitzsimmons returned to the University of Newcastle in 2022 as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Centre for Complex Disease Neurobiology and Precision Medicine under Conjoint Professor Murray Cairns. Her current research aims to enhance understanding of complex neuropsychiatric disorder pathogenesis, employing patient-derived cerebral organoids and molecular/phenotypic assays to test the pharmagenic enrichment strategy (PES) for genetically informed precision medicine treatments in schizophrenia, with high potential for clinical translation. Her research specializations include epigenetics, liposomes, molecular virology, oncopharmacology, pharmacogenomics, psychiatric disorders, schizophrenia, and microRNA. She has received the Australian Postgraduate Award (2007), Alzheimer’s Association 2008 International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease travel fellowship, and Philip Emlyn Thomas Honours Scholarship in Environmental Studies (2005). Key publications include "Extension of mRNA poly(A) tails and 3′UTRs during neuronal differentiation exhibits variable association with post-transcriptional dynamics" (Nucleic Acids Research, 2023), "The MIR137 VNTR rs58335419 Is Associated With Cognitive Impairment in Schizophrenia and Altered Cortical Morphology" (Schizophrenia Bulletin, 2021), "Depolarization-Associated CircRNA Regulate Neural Gene Expression and in Some Cases May Function as Templates for Translation" (Cells, 2020), "Circular RNA biogenesis is decreased in postmortem cortical gray matter in schizophrenia and may alter the bioavailability of associated miRNA" (Neuropsychopharmacology, 2019), and "The Medical Genome Reference Bank contains whole genome and phenotype data of 2570 healthy elderly" (Nature Communications, 2020).