Rate My Professor Lauren Watt

Dr. Lauren Watt serves as a Casual Research Officer and Casual Academic in the School of Biomedical Sciences and Pharmacy, part of the College of Health, Medicine and Wellbeing at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She earned her Bachelor of Biomedical Sciences, Bachelor of Biomedical Sciences (Honours) with a University Medal, and Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Newcastle. Her Honours research investigated the role of Protein Phosphatase 2A (PP2A) in mast cells with a focus on asthma. During her PhD, funded by a Cancer Institute NSW Research Scholars Award worth $75,000 from 2007 to 2009, she shifted her focus to breast cancer, developing a 3D cell culture model of human breast ducts to study how PP2A mutations influence cancer characteristics. After completing her PhD under the mentorship of Associate Professor Nikki Verrills, Dr. Watt paused her laboratory work for family reasons. In 2021, she rejoined the Verrills laboratory part-time as a postdoctoral researcher, working remotely on data analysis, literature reviews, administrative tasks, and professional networking while balancing family commitments. Her research specializations include breast cancer, Protein Phosphatase 2A, cancer cell biology, and data analysis.

Dr. Watt has contributed to several key publications, including "Functional importance of PP2A regulatory subunit loss in breast cancer" (Breast Cancer Research and Treatment, 2017, with Panicker N et al.), a conference presentation on PP2A from mammalian development to breast cancer (European Journal of Cancer, 2018), "Dephosphorylation of CaMKII at T253 controls the metaphase-anaphase transition" (Cellular Signalling, 2014), and "Protein phosphatase 2A carboxymethylation and regulatory B subunits differentially regulate mast cell degranulation" (Cellular Signalling, 2010). More recently, she co-authored a preprint on "Bisantrene potentiates tyrosine kinase inhibitor activity in clear cell renal cell carcinoma" (bioRxiv, 2025). Additionally, she presented "Functional role of the tumor suppressor protein phosphatase, PP2A-B55 alpha, in breast cancer" at the American Association for Cancer Research conference in 2017. Through her work, Dr. Watt has advanced understanding of PP2A's role in cancer progression.