Rate My Professor Sherry Wu

Associate Professor Sherry Wu heads the Cancer Therapeutics Lab in the School of Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine at the University of Queensland. She earned her Bachelor of Pharmacy (Honours) and Doctor of Philosophy in cancer medicine from the University of Queensland in 2010. Wu completed a Graduate Certificate in Translational Cancer Research through the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center TRIUMPH program and held postdoctoral translational cancer research fellowships at Johns Hopkins University and M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. She took up her academic position at UQ School of Biomedical Sciences in late 2017. Her expertise encompasses target discovery using large-scale experimental databases, in vitro and in vivo validation models, nanotechnology, and molecular biology techniques to study mechanisms of action and resistance in cancer.

Wu's research focuses on developing strategies to overcome immune suppression in ovarian and breast cancers, novel nanoparticle platforms for tumor-targeted delivery, and approaches to enhance patient survival. Key themes include understanding factors contributing to immune suppression, developing clinically translatable nanosystems to break immune barriers, and harnessing exosomes for non-coding RNA delivery. She has received major awards and fellowships such as the National Institutes of Health R35 Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (2017-2018 and 2017-2024), Ovarian Cancer Research Fund Alliance Liz Tilberis Early Career Award (2016-2019), Cancer Institute NSW Career Development Fellowship (2018-2020, declined), Australian Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation grant (2017-2018), and NHMRC Postgraduate Scholarship (2006-2009). UQ Foundation Research Excellence Award in 2018. Notable publications include 'A miR-192-EGR1-HOXB9 regulatory network controls the angiogenic switch in cancer' (Nature Communications, 2016), 'Hematogenous metastasis of ovarian cancer: rethinking mode of spread' (Cancer Cell, 2014), 'miR-146a inhibits ovarian tumor growth in vivo via targeting immunosuppressive neutrophils' (Molecular Therapy - Oncolytics, 2023), and '2’-OMe-phosphorodithioate modified siRNAs show increased loading into the RISC complex and enhanced anti-tumour activity' (Nature Communications, 2014). Wu supervises PhD students on projects involving single-cell transcriptomics, AI for immunotherapy, exosome targeting, and nano-systems for cancer treatment.