Rate My Professor Jessika Wise

Jessika Wise is a Research Fellow and Laboratory Manager at the Christchurch Heart Institute, Department of Medicine, University of Otago, Christchurch. She earned her BSc (Honours) at the University of Otago, where she investigated prostate cancer cell interactions with stromal cells using transwell co-culture models under the supervision of Dr Elspeth Gold. Wise completed her PhD in 2023 at the University of Otago, Christchurch, in the Department of Pathology and Biomedical Science. Her doctoral thesis, titled 'The development of a three-dimensional in vitro breast cancer-mature adipocyte co-culture model,' was conducted in collaboration between the Mackenzie Cancer Research Group and the Christchurch Regenerative Medicine and Tissue Engineering (CReaTE) group. Supervised by Dr Elisabeth Phillips, Professor Khoon Lim, Professor Tim Woodfield, and Associate Professor Margaret Currie, her research developed 3D bioprinted hydrogel models incorporating breast cancer cells and patient-derived mature adipocytes to study tumor-microenvironment interactions and test novel therapeutics.

In 2018, Wise received the Health Research Society of Canterbury's Rutherford Poster Prize for her presentation on a 3D breast cancer-adipocyte model. Following her PhD, she worked at Upstream Medical Technologies in the biotechnology sector, focusing on cardiovascular biomarker discovery for clinical diagnostics. Currently, in the laboratories of Associate Professor Anna Pilbrow and Professor Chris Pemberton, her research involves human cellular models of ischaemia-reperfusion injury in acute coronary syndromes and cardiovascular biomarker development. Wise is first author on 'Gelatin-methacryloyl hydrogel stiffness influences epithelial-mesenchymal transition in MCF7 but not MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells in 3D culture' (Biology Open, 2026). She has co-authored publications including 'Programming temporal stiffness cues within extracellular matrix-mimicking hydrogels for directing mesenchymal stromal cell fate' (Materials Today Bio, 2024) and 'Insulin-like Growth Factor Binding Protein-3 (IGFBP-3): a biomarker of coronary artery disease induced myocardial injury' (2025). Her work advances biomimetic 3D models bridging cancer biology and cardiovascular research.