Rate My Professor Archa Fox

Professor Archa Fox is a Professor in the School of Human Sciences and the School of Molecular Sciences at the University of Western Australia, and an affiliate investigator with the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research. She serves as Director of the Australian Centre for RNA Therapeutics in Cancer and the RNA Innovation Foundry. Fox obtained her Bachelor of Science degree, majoring in molecular genetics, from the University of New South Wales and her PhD from the University of Sydney in 2000, where her research under Merlin Crossley focused on transcription factors and gene regulation. She then pursued postdoctoral research in Angus Lamond's laboratory at the University of Dundee, Scotland, integrating cell biology, microscopy, and molecular biology.

In 2006, Fox established her independent laboratory at the Western Australian Institute for Medical Research, now the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research, and took up an academic position at the University of Western Australia in 2015. Her research specializes in molecular cell biology, particularly nuclear organization and RNA-mediated gene regulation. She is renowned for her 2002 discovery of paraspeckles, subnuclear bodies essential for controlling gene expression that are implicated in cancer and other diseases, and for identifying NEAT1 in 2009 as the foundational long noncoding RNA that scaffolds paraspeckles. Her group's work examines paraspeckle assembly through intrinsically disordered protein regions, liquid-liquid phase separation, membraneless organelles, and RNA-binding proteins, with applications to RNA therapeutics for cancer. With over 13,000 citations on Google Scholar, her contributions have profoundly shaped the fields of lncRNA function and nuclear architecture. Key publications include 'Paraspeckles' (Journal of Cell Biology, 2002), the foundational NEAT1 paper (2009), 'NONO, SFPQ, and PSPC1 promote telomerase recruitment to the telomere' (Nature Communications, 2025), and 'Structural and mechanistic analysis of covalent ligands targeting the RNA-binding protein NONO' (Cell Chemical Biology, 2026). Fox has earned the Marshall Medal from the Harry Perkins Institute (2012), Emerging Leader Award from the Australian/New Zealand Society for Cell and Developmental Biology (2017), served as Director of the International RNA Society (2020-2021), chaired the RNA Network of Australia since 2015, and received the School of Human Sciences Senior Research Award and Vice Chancellor's Senior Research Award (both 2023).