Rate My Professor Mary Bebawy

Professor Mary Bebawy is the Professor of Pharmacy and Discipline Lead for Pharmacy in the School of Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of New England. She obtained her Bachelor of Science from the University of New South Wales and her PhD from the University of Sydney. With more than 20 years of experience in higher education, Professor Bebawy has held several leadership positions. At the University of Technology Sydney, she served as Professor in the Discipline of Pharmacy from July 2011 to April 2022, Director of Research and Innovation, and was a founding member of the Graduate School of Health and the Discipline of Pharmacy. Prior to that, at the University of Sydney Faculty of Pharmacy, she was Senior Lecturer from November 2004 to July 2011 and Associate Dean (Learning and Teaching) from January 2004 to August 2006.

Professor Bebawy's academic interests center on pharmacy and cancer research, specifically investigating extracellular vesicle biogenesis, intercellular transfer of drug resistance mechanisms, and their implications for cancer therapy. Her influential publications include "Circulating biosignatures in multiple myeloma and their role in multidrug resistance" (2023), "Membrane to cytosol redistribution of αII-spectrin drives extracellular vesicle biogenesis in malignant breast cells" (2021), "Extracellular Vesicles in Chemoresistance" (2021), "Ca2+ mediates extracellular vesicle biogenesis through alternate pathways in malignancy" (2020), "Microparticles shed from multidrug resistant breast cancer cells provide a parallel survival pathway through immune evasion" (2017), "A novel method to detect translation of membrane proteins following microvesicle intercellular transfer of nucleic acids" (2016), "Microparticles Mediate the Intercellular Regulation of microRNA-503 and Proline-Rich Tyrosine Kinase 2 to Alter the Migration and Invasion Capacity of Breast Cancer Cells" (2014), and the seminal "Membrane microparticles mediate transfer of P-glycoprotein to drug sensitive cancer cells" (2009). She co-authored the MISEV2018 guidelines on extracellular vesicles. Additionally, she chairs the School of Health Research Committee at UNE and was shortlisted for the 2017 Lush Prize Creative Scientist award.