Professor Edna Hardeman

Professor Hardeman received her doctorate from the Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University in the field of cholesterol biosynthesis and then took up a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Pharmacology, Stanford Medical School to study muscle determination factors funded by an NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship. She established her laboratory, the Muscle Development Unit, at the Children's Medical Research Institute in Sydney, and built an international reputation defining mechanisms of muscle gene regulation, generating mouse models for human muscle diseases of actin thin filaments, and trialing therapies as part of an international consortium of the European Neuromuscular Center.

In 2009 she moved to the University of New South Wales to take up a Research Chair in Anatomy and establish the Cellular and Genetic Medicine Unit. In 2018 she became the Head of Cell Biology in the School of Medical Sciences.

Throughout her research career she has studied the physiology of the actin/tropomyosin cytoskeleton and in collaboration with Professor Peter Gunning, identified tropomyosins as the gatekeepers of actin filament function and established the physiological role of the cancer-associated tropomyosin, Tpm3.1. Her laboratory has examined Tpm3.1 as a druggable target for cancer therapy including demonstrating the efficacy of anti-Tpm3.1 drugs to treat the childhood cancer neuroblastoma, in a mouse xenograft model. They have expanded their drug development programs to target additional tropomyosin isoforms in a range of human disease indications.

She was a member of the Scientific Advisory Boards of the Australian Research Council Special Research Centres for the Molecular Genetics of Development (2004-2009) and Functional and Applied Genomics (2006-2009), President of the Australian and New Zealand Society for Cell and Developmental Biology (200-2011), Member (2009-2013) and Chair (2013-ongoing) of the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council Animal Welfare Committee, and Deputy Chair (2010-2013) and Chair (2014-2016) of the National Committee for Biomedical Sciences, the Australian Academy of Science. She was a member of the UNSW Academic Board and Committee on Research (2010-2013).

Current Appointments & Positions Held

• Professor, Head of Cell Biology, Department of Pathology, School of Medical Sciences
• Chair, NHMRC Animal Welfare Committee
• Committee Member, Australian and New Zealand Society for Cell and Developmental Biology

Membership in Societies

• Australian and New Zealand Society for Cell and Developmental Biology
• Australian Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
• Australian Society for Medical Research
• Australian Society for Mechanobiology
• American Society for Cell Biology
• Biophysical Society