Rate My Professor Ianthe Pitout

Dr. Ianthe Pitout serves as a Research Fellow and Associate Lecturer at the Personalised Medicine Centre, Health Futures Institute, Murdoch University. She earned her Doctor of Philosophy in Molecular Genetics from Murdoch University between 2015 and 2019, and a Bachelor of Science with Honours in Biomedical Science from the University of Western Australia from 2004 to 2008. As a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Molecular Medicines and Innovative Therapeutics (CMMIT) at Murdoch University and the Motor Neuron Disease Genetics and Therapeutics laboratory at the Perron Institute for Neurological and Translational Science, Pitout focuses on RNA-targeted therapeutics, particularly antisense oligonucleotides, to address degenerative diseases including inherited blindness and neurodegenerative conditions such as motor neurone disease (MND).

Pitout has accumulated six years of practical experience designing and evaluating antisense therapeutics in the Molecular Therapies laboratory of Professors Sue Fletcher and Steve Wilton. Her PhD innovations contributed to a molecule advancing through early-phase commercialization by PYC Therapeutics for inherited retinopathy. Her current research develops novel strategies for MND, encompassing drugs to modulate autophagy and reduce protein toxicity, genetic biomarkers for clinical trial patient stratification, and MND cell models to assess antisense oligonucleotide therapeutics. She supervises doctoral students on projects related to personalised therapeutics for MND and autophagy upregulation. Pitout has been awarded the Western Australian Innovator of the Year by the Government of Western Australia, the Peter Stearne Familial MND Research Grant as lead researcher, and the Run MND NSW Research Grant for a new drug candidate targeting C9ORF72-linked MND. She contributed to a team securing a $1 million FightMND grant for MND treatment testing. Key publications include 'Antisense-mediated splice intervention to treat human disease: the odyssey continues' (2019), 'Association of a structural variant within the SQSTM1 gene with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis' (2020), 'Characterising splicing defects of ABCA4 variants within exons 13 and 14 in inherited retinal disease patients' (2022), 'Modulation of CNOT3 expression using antisense oligomers to treat inherited retinal disease' (2021), and 'Paraspeckle condensation is controlled via TDP-43 polymerization and linked to neuroprotection' (2026). Her work advances molecular medicine for genetic and neurodegenerative disorders.