Rate My Professor Therese Featherston

Therese Featherston earned her Bachelor of Biomedical Sciences with Honours (BBiomedSc (Hons)) from the University of Otago in 2019. Her honours thesis, titled 'Peroxiredoxins as biomarkers of oxidative stress in metastatic melanoma cells,' investigated the potential of peroxiredoxins as indicators of oxidative stress in advanced melanoma. She continued her studies at the University of Otago, Christchurch, within the Department of Pathology and Biomedical Science and the Mātai Hāora - Centre for Redox Biology and Medicine (formerly the Centre for Free Radical Research), completing her Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in 2024. Her doctoral dissertation, 'Exploiting oxidative stress in the treatment of drug-resistant melanoma,' explored strategies to leverage elevated oxidative stress levels in resistant melanoma cells for improved therapeutic outcomes. Throughout her graduate work, Featherston was supported by a University of Otago PhD scholarship and the Maurice Wilkins Centre.

Featherston's research centers on redox biology, with a particular emphasis on oxidative stress mechanisms in melanoma progression, drug resistance, and antioxidant defenses. She co-authored 'Melanoma redox biology and the emergence of drug resistance' in Advances in Cancer Research (2024) and 'Comparing automated cell imaging with conventional methods of measuring cell proliferation and viability' in Toxicology Mechanisms and Methods (2024), the latter validating automated imaging techniques against traditional assays for cancer cell studies. Collaborating with researchers including Professor Mark B. Hampton and Dr. Martina Paumann-Page, her contributions have advanced methodologies in redox-sensitive cancer research. In 2022, as a PhD candidate, she mentored Christchurch High School student Carol Tuu, whose science fair project on oxidative stress, guided by Featherston and Hampton, won the Prime Minister's Science Prize for Emerging Scientists. Following her PhD, Featherston joined the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, UK, as a postdoctoral researcher, extending her work on redox processes in disease. Her academic trajectory at the University of Otago underscores her dedication to biomedical research in pathology and cancer biology.