Endocrine Abstracts

Peter J Leedman, Laboratory for Cancer Medicine and School of Medicine & Pharmacology, Perth, Australia Abstract

Peter Leedman graduated in Medicine at the University of Western Australia (UWA) in 1981, then moved to Melbourne for specialist training in Endocrinology in 1988. He completed PhD studies at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI) with Len Harrison in Melbourne in 1991 and a then post-doc at Harvard Medical School with Bill Chin. He returned to Australia in 1994 to take up an academic position at the UWA based at Royal Perth Hospital. Since then, he has been recognized internationally for his work on hormone action, with particular expertise in understanding the mechanisms regulating expression (especially RNA biology and RNA-protein interactions) of key targets for therapeutics in hormone-dependent cancer (breast and prostate). He has made important contributions to understanding the regulation of androgen receptor, growth factor receptor and p21^WAF1 gene expression, and identified novel functionally relevant RNA-binding proteins for each target, which are currently the focus of structural studies to direct small molecule development. More recently, the discovery of several novel RNA coactivator-binding proteins that modulate estrogen and androgen action at the transcriptional level, has provided a range of new potential therapeutic targets. He has received several awards, including the Merck Senior Fellow award from the US Endocrine Society. He currently serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Molecular Endocrinology and is Deputy Director of the Western Australian Institute for Medical Research (WAIMR) in Perth.