Projects
About me
Pam Pollock is an Associate Professor at QUT. She completed her PhD at QIMR in 2000, before spending 9.5 years in the USA at the NIH and then TGen and returning to Brisbane in 2010. Her current research focuses on understanding FGFR2 in endometrial cancer and includes basic, preclinical and translational projects.
Dr Pollock’s was the first group to identify loss-of-function mutation in FGFR2 in melanoma as well as activating FGFR2 mutations in endometrial cancer. She went on to show that FGFR2 mutations were associated with poor survival in endometrial cancer and showed that FGFR inhibition could induce cell death despite the downstream activation of the PI3K signalling pathway.
Dr Pollock has published a total of 50 articles (15 in the last 5 years) consisting of 39 research articles, 5 reviews, 3 book chapters and 3 editorials. Her work has been cited over 4000 times and her H-index is 30 (Google Scholar). Since establishing her research group at TGen in Phoenix in 2003 and re-establishing her group in Australia in 2010, Dr Pollock has obtained a total of $2.6M in grant support as the PI or CIA (NHMRC, TCCQ, DoD and multiple charitable foundations in the USA) and an additional $~4.1M as a co-investigator (NIH). She has been invited to talk at international and national meetings including the NCI Translational Science Meeting (2011), the Gordon Research Conference on Fibroblast Growth Factors in Development and Disease (2012) and the upcoming International Gynecologic Cancer Society Meeting in late 2014.
Publications
- Pollock, PM, Harper, U. Hansen, K, Yudt, L, Stark, M, Moses, T, Robbins, C, Hostetter, G. Wagner, U, Kakareka, J, Salem, G, Pohida, T. Heenan, P., Duray, P., Hayward, NK., Kallioniemi, O., Trent, J., Meltzer, P. (2003) BRAF mutations in nevi implicate activation of MAPK pathway in initiation of melanocytic neoplasia Nat Genet. 33(1):19-20.
- Pollock PM*, Cohen-Solal K*, Sood R*, Namkoong J, Martino JJ, Koganti A, Zhu H, Robbins C, Makalowska I, Shin SS, Marin Y, Roberts KG, Yudt LM, Chen A, Cheng J, Incao A, Pinkett HW, Graham CL, Dunn K, Crespo-Carbone SM, Mackason KR, Ryan KB, Sinsimer D, Goydos J, Reuhl KR, Eckhaus M, Meltzer PS, Pavan WJ, Trent JM, Chen S. (2003) Melanoma mouse model implicates metabotropic glutamate signaling in melanocytic neoplasia. Nat Genet. 34(1):108-12. (* equal first authors)
- Pollock, PM, Gartside, MG, De Jeza. L, Powell, MA, Mallon, MA , Cancer Genome Project, Davies, H, Mohammadi, M. , Futreal PA, Stratton, MR, Trent, JM, Goodfellow, PJ. Frequent activating FGFR2 mutations in endometrial carcinomas parallel germline mutations associated with craniosynostosis and skeletal dysplasia syndromes. Oncogene. 2007 26(50):7158-62.
- Byron SA, Gartside MG, Wellens C, Mallon M, Keenan JB, Powell MA, Goodfellow PJ, Pollock PM. Inhibition of activated fibroblast growth factor receptor 2 in endometrial cancer cells induces cell death despite PTEN abrogation. Cancer Res. 2008 68(17):6902-7.
- Gartside M, Ibrahimi, O, Chen H, Curtis A, Byron S, Wellens C, Bengston A, Yudt L, Eliseenkova AV, Ma J, Curtin J, Hyder P, Harper U, Riedesel E, Mann G, Trent J, Bastian B, Meltzer P, Mohammadi M, Pollock PM. Loss-of-function FGFR2 mutations in melanoma” Mol Cancer Res. 2009 Jan;7(1):41-54
- Byron, SA, Gartside MG, Powell, M, Wellens, CL, Gao, F, Mutch DG, Goodfellow, PJ, Pollock. PM. FGFR2 Mutations in 466 Endometrioid Endometrial Tumours: Relationship with MSI, KRAS, PIK3CA, CTNNB1 Mutations and Clinicopathological Features. PLoS ONE, 2012;7(2):e30801.
- Byron, SA, Loch, D, Wellens, C, Wu, J, Wang, J, Nomoto, K, and Pollock, PM. Sensitivity to the MEK Inhibitor, E6201, is Associated with Mutant BRAF and wildtype PTEN Status Mol Cancer. 2012 Oct 5;11:75
- Integrated genomic characterization of endometrial carcinoma TCGA Consortia. Member of Endometrial Cancer Analysis Working Group as disease expert. Nature Volume 497, Issue 7447, 2013, Pages 67-73
- Byron, SA, Wortmann, A, Chen, H, Loch, D, Mohammadi, M, Pollock PM.The N550K/H mutations in FGFR2 confer differential resistance to PDI173074, dovitinib, and ponatinib ATP-competitive inhibitors. Neoplasia. 2013 Aug;15(8):975-88. (IF 5.4 citations
- Powell, MA, Sill, MW, Goodfellow PJ, Benbrook DM, Lankes HA, Leslie KK, Jeske Y, Mannel, RS Spillman, MA, Lee PS, Hoffman JS, McMeekin DS, Pollock PM. A Phase II Trial of Brivanib in Recurrent or Persistent Endometrial Cancer: A Gynecologic Oncology Group Study. Gynecologic Oncology Gynecol Oncol. 2014 Jul 11. doi: 10.1016/ j.ygyno.2014.07.083. [Epub ahead of print]
