Rate My Professor Martina Paumann-Page

Dr Martina Paumann-Page is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Pathology and Biomedical Science at the University of Otago, Christchurch, Faculty of Medicine. She earned a Master of Science in Biotechnology and Food Science from the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences (BOKU), Vienna, Austria, and a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Vienna. As recipient of an Erwin Schrödinger Fellowship from the FWF Austrian Science Fund for research abroad, she joined the Centre for Free Radical Research at the University of Otago as a postdoctoral research fellow in 2009. Following a postdoctoral position in Vienna from 2013 to 2016, she permanently joined the Centre in 2017, where she has advanced to Senior Research Fellow. She has co-supervised one PhD student, one honours student, and two summer students.

Dr Paumann-Page's research centers on the involvement of mammalian peroxidase oxidants in health and disease, with a focus on peroxidasin, an extracellular peroxidase upregulated in cancers such as metastatic melanoma. Her studies demonstrate that high peroxidasin expression correlates with increased invasiveness, revealing its causative role in promoting mesenchymal-like phenotypes, invasion, and modulation of the tumour microenvironment. She investigates underlying molecular mechanisms and potential therapeutic strategies to inhibit peroxidasin and exploit oxidative stress vulnerabilities in cancer cells. Her contributions are supported by grants including a Marsden Fund project (Associate Investigator since 2019), Health Research Council project grant (AI), Cancer Research Trust NZ project grant (PI), and Canterbury Medical Research Foundation project grants (PI). In 2017, she received the Freemasons Carrell-Espiner Research Fellowship and a CMRF Major Project Grant. Key publications include 'Ceruloplasmin is an endogenous inhibitor of myeloperoxidase' (Journal of Biological Chemistry, 2013), 'Peroxidasin protein expression and enzymatic activity in metastatic melanoma cell lines are associated with invasive potential' (2021), 'Peroxidasin inhibition by phloroglucinol and other peroxidase inhibitors' (Antioxidants, 2024), 'Melanoma redox biology and the emergence of drug resistance' (Advances in Cancer Research, 2024), and 'Peroxidasin is associated with a mesenchymal-like transcriptional phenotype and promotes invasion in metastatic melanoma' (Free Radical Biology & Medicine, 2025).