Rate My Professor David Leavesley

Professor David Leavesley serves as Professor in the School of Biomedical Sciences and Pharmacy at the University of Newcastle, Australia, within the College of Health, Medicine and Wellbeing. He earned a BSc (Hons 1A) in Life Sciences from Flinders University (1978-1981) and a PhD in Cytology and Cell Biology of Breast Cancer from University College London and Imperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratories (1984-1989). His distinguished career encompasses roles as Associate Professor in the School of Biomedical Sciences at Queensland University of Technology (2007-2015), Senior Principal Investigator at the Institute of Medical Biology, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) in Singapore (2015-2018), and Senior Principal Investigator at the Skin Research Institute of Singapore, A*STAR (2018 onwards). Currently at the University of Newcastle, he focuses on course design and hands-on teaching while maintaining research involvement. Leavesley co-founded Tissue Therapies Ltd (ASX: TIS) in 2001 and is a co-inventor of VitroGro-ECM™ along with eight other PCT patents, demonstrating his impact in translating research into practical tissue technologies.

David Leavesley's research centers on the cellular basis of disease, particularly epithelial wound repair and healing, with specializations in wound healing, tissue engineering, cell culture and proliferation, cell signaling, cancer biology, biomaterials, immunohistochemistry, flow cytometry, primary cell culture, and cellular biology. Key interests include stalled inflammation in non-healing wounds potentially due to extracellular traps, scar remediation using traditional Chinese medicine compounds like shikonin, diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers from wound fluids, microRNAs and long non-coding RNAs in healing, and development of ex vivo human skin equivalent models for therapy testing and toxicology. Select publications include 'A sustainable strategy for generating highly stable human skin equivalents based on fish collagen' (2024), 'Hydrogel dressings with intrinsic antibiofilm and antioxidative dual functionalities accelerate infected diabetic wound healing' (2024), 'Automated electrical stimulation therapy accelerates re-epithelialization in a 3D in vitro human skin wound model' (2023), 'Vascular and Collagen Target: A Rational Approach to Hypertrophic Scar Management' (2021), 'Keratin-Alginate Sponges Support Healing of Partial-Thickness Burns' (2021), and 'Vitronectin—master controller or micromanager?' (2013). He contributes as an editorial board member for Biology (MDPI) and Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences, fostering advancements in biomedical sciences.