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About Michelle
Dr Michelle Wong-Brown is a postdoctoral researcher and casual academic affiliated with the School of Medicine and Public Health and the School of Biomedical Sciences and Pharmacy within the College of Health, Medicine and Wellbeing at the University of Newcastle. She earned her Bachelor of Biomedical Science in 2007, followed by a Bachelor of Biomedical Science (Honours) and a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Newcastle. Early in her career, she worked as a hospital scientist in the Molecular Genetics diagnostic laboratory at NSW Health Pathology's Hunter Area Pathology Service from 2008 to 2009, conducting genetic tests for BRCA genes associated with breast cancer predisposition. She served as a tutor at the University of Newcastle School of Biomedical Sciences from 2009 to 2010 and as a research assistant from 2008 onward. In 2015, her expertise in sequencing led to her appointment as a member of the Advisory Committee for the Royal College of Pathologists Quality Assurance Program's Sanger DNA Sequencing module. Since 2018, she has been a postdoctoral researcher with the DNA Repair Group at the Hunter Medical Research Institute.
Dr Wong-Brown's research centers on the homologous recombination DNA repair pathway, particularly chemotherapy resistance in ovarian cancer due to HR deficiency. Her work explores drug repurposing for alternative treatments, including developing clinical trials with existing drugs in collaboration with oncologists at Calvary Mater to accelerate implementation. She investigates BRCA mutations, gene expression, and personalized treatments based on DNA repair profiles to predict chemotherapy responses. Key contributions include the frequently cited article 'BRIP1, PALB2, and RAD51C mutation analysis reveals their relative importance as genetic susceptibility factors for breast cancer,' which demonstrated PALB2's role in familial breast cancer predisposition, influencing genetic testing protocols. Other notable works encompass the book chapter 'Genetic Susceptibility to Triple-Negative Breast Cancers' (2014) and numerous peer-reviewed conference presentations, such as 'High-throughput in vitro screening of potential drug repurposing candidates for high-grade serous ovarian cancer' (2025) and 'Drug repurposing to target TGF-β in chemoresistant high-grade serous ovarian cancer' (2023). Her achievements include the HMRI Karen Brown Breast Cancer Travel Award (2014, first recipient), HCRA 2013 Excellence in Translational Research, and the 2012 Winter School in Mathematical and Computational Biology Travel Bursary Award. She participated in the University’s ThinkWell Early and Mid-Career Women’s Development Program in 2018.
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