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About

I am a clinician-scientist and Joint Head of the ACRF Cancer Biology and Stem Cells Division and Breast Cancer Laboratory. I am also a medical oncologist at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and Royal Melbourne Hospital and hold an honorary appointment as Professorial Fellow in the Department of Medicine, Royal Melbourne Hospital, University of Melbourne.

After medical oncology training in Sydney (RPA and Westmead Hospitals), I obtained my PhD at WEHI (Harris and Cory Laboratories), and then pursued postdoctoral training at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard Medical School Livingston Laboratory).

On return to Australia, Professor Jane Visvader and I established a Breast Cancer Laboratory. Our group is studying molecular regulators of normal mammary gland development and cancer, with a particular interest in understanding how mammary stem cells and their progeny contribute to the mammary epithelial cell hierarchy and breast cancer. This work led to the discovery of RANK-positive progenitors as a target for breast cancer prevention in BRCA1 mutation carriers. Our laboratory is also using patient derived xenograft (PDX) and tumor organoid models to test promising anti-cancer agents.

Preclinical studies using BH3 mimetics have led to early phase studies of the BCL2 inhibitor venetoclax in breast cancer.

Publications

Selected publications from Prof Geoff Lindeman

Shackleton M, Vaillant F, Simpson KJ, Stingl J, Smyth GK, Asselin-Labat ML, Wu L, Lindeman GJ*, Visvader JE*. Generation of a functional mammary gland from a single stem cell. Nature. 2006 439(7072):84-8. PMID: 16397499. *Equal senior author.

Asselin-Labat ML, Shackleton M, Stingl J, Vaillant F, Forrest NC, Eaves CJ, Visvader JE, Lindeman GJ. Steroid hormone receptor status of mouse mammary stem cells.
J Natl Cancer Inst. 2006 98(14), 1011-4. PMID: 16849684

Asselin-Labat ML, Sutherland KD, Barker H, Thomas R, Shackleton M, Forrest NC, Hartley L, Robb L, Grosveld FG, van der Wees J, Lindeman GJ, Visvader JE. Gata-3 is an essential regulator of mammary-gland morphogenesis and luminal-cell differentiation. Nat Cell Biol. 2007 9(2), 201-9. PMID: 17187062

Lim E, Vaillant F, Wu D, Forrest NC, Pal B, Hart AH, Asselin-Labat ML, Gyorki DE, Ward T, Partanen A, Feleppa F, Huschtscha LI, Thorne HJ, Fox SB, Yan M, French JD, Brown MA, Smyth GK, Visvader JE*, Lindeman GJ*. Aberrant luminal progenitors as the candidate target population for basal tumor development in BRCA1 mutation carriers. Nature Medicine. 2009 15(8):907-13. PMID: 19648928.

Asselin-Labat ML, Vaillant F, Sheridan JM, Pal B, Wu D, Simpson ER, Yasuda H, Smyth GK, Martin TJ, Lindeman GJ, Visvader JE. Control of mammary stem cell function by steroid hormone signalling. Nature. 2010 465(7299):798-802. PMID: 20383121.

Vaillant F, Merino D, Lee L, Breslin K, Pal B, Ritchie ME, Smyth GK, Christie M, Phillipson LJ, Burns CJ, Mann GB, Visvader JE, Lindeman GJ. Targeting BCL-2 with the BH3 Mimetic ABT-199 in Estrogen Receptor-Positive Breast Cancer. Cancer Cell. 2013 24(1):120-9. PMID: 23845444

Rios AC, Fu NY, Lindeman GJ, Visvader JE. In situ identification of bipotent stem cells in the mammary gland. Nature. 2014 506(7488):322-7. PMID: 24463516.

Fu NY, Rios AC, Pal B, Soetanto R, Lun AT, Liu K, Beck T, Best SA, Vaillant F, Bouillet P, Strasser A, Preiss T, Smyth GK, Lindeman GJ*, Visvader JE*. EGF-mediated induction of Mcl-1 at the switch to lactation is essential for alveolar cell survival. Nat Cell Biol. 2015 17(4), 365-75. PMID: 25730472 *Equal senior author.

Nolan E, Vaillant F, Branstetter DB, Pal B, Giner G, Whitehead L, Lok SW, Mann GB, kConFab, Rohrbach K, Huang LY, Soriano R, Smyth GK, Dougall WC, Visvader JE*, Lindeman GJ*. RANK ligand as a potential target for breast cancer prevention in BRCA1 mutation carriers. Nature Med. 2016 22(8):933–939. PMID: 27322743 *Equal senior author.

Rios AC, Fu NY, Jamieson PR, Pal B, Whitehead L, Nicholas KR, Lindeman GJ, Visvader JE. Essential role for a novel population of binucleated mammary epithelial cells in lactation.
Nat Commun. 2016 7, 11400. PMID: 27102712

Nolan E, Savas P, Policheni AN, Darcy PK, Vaillant F, Mintoff C, Mariam Mansour M, Pang J-MB, Fox SB, kConFab, Perou CM, Visvader JE, Gray DHD*, Loi S*, Lindeman GJ*. Combined immune checkpoint blockade as a therapeutic strategy for BRCA1-mutated breast cancer. Sci Transl Med. 2017 9(393), eaal4922. PMID: 28592566 *Equal senior author.

Merino D, Whittle JR, Vaillant F, Serrano A, Gong J-N, Giner G, Maragno A-L, Chanrion M, Schneider E, Pal B, Li X, Dewson G, Gräsel J, Liu K, Lalaoui N, Segal D, Herold MJ, Huang D, Smyth GK, Geneste O, Lessene G, Visvader JE, Lindeman GJ. Synergistic action of the MCL-1 inhibitor S63845 with current therapies in preclinical models of triple negative and HER2-amplified breast cancer. Sci Transl Med. 2017 9(401), eaam7049. PMID: 28768804

Lok SW, Whittle JR, Vaillant F, The CE, Lo LL, Policheni AN, Bergin ART, Desai J, Ftouni S, Gandolfo LC, Liew D, Liu HK, Mann GB, Moodie K, Murugasu A, Pal B, Roberts AW, Rosenthal MA, Shackleton K, Silva MJ, Siow ZR, Smyth GK, Taylor L, Travers A, Yeo B, Yeung M, Zivanovic Bujak A, Dawson SJ, Gray DHD, Visvader JE, Lindeman GJ. A phase 1b dose-escalation and expansion study of the BCL-2 inhibitor venetoclax combined with tamoxifen in ER and BCL-2–positive metastatic breast cancer. Cancer Discovery. 2019 9(3):354-369. PMID 30518523

Rios AC, Capaldo BD, Vaillant F, Pal B, van Ineveld R, Dawson CA, Chen Y, Nolan E, Fu NY; 3DTCLSM Group; Jackling FC, Devi S, Clouston D, Whitehead L, Smyth GK, Mueller SN, Lindeman GJ, Visvader JE. Intraclonal plasticity in mammary tumors revealed through Large-scale Single-cell Resolution 3D imaging. Cancer Cell. 2019 35(4), 618-632.e6. PMID: 30930118

Dekkers JF, Whittle JR, Vaillant F, Chen HR, Dawson C, Liu K, Geurts MH, Herold MJ, Clevers H, Lindeman GJ, Visvader JE. Modeling breast cancer using CRISPR-Cas9-mediated engineering of human breast organoids. J Natl Cancer Inst. 2020 112(5):540-544. PMID: 31589320

Whittle JR, Vaillant F, Surgenor E, Policheni AN, Giner G, Capaldo BD, Chen HR, Liu HK, Dekkers JF, Sachs N, Clevers H, Fellowes A, Green T, Xu H, Fox SB, Herold MJ, Smyth GK, Gray DHD, Visvader JE, Lindeman GJ. Dual targeting of CDK4/6 and BCL2 pathways augments tumor response in estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer. Clin Cancer Res. 2020 26(15), 4120-4134. PMID: 32245900

Pal B, Chen Y, Milevskiy MJG, Vaillant F, Prokopuk L, Dawson CA, Capaldo BD, Song X, Jackling F, Timpson P, Lindeman GJ, Smyth GK, Visvader JE. Single cell transcriptome atlas of mouse mammary epithelial cells across development. Breast Cancer Res. 2021 J23(1), 69. PMID: 34187545

Pal B, Chen Y, Vaillant F, Capaldo BD, Joyce R, Song X, Bryant VL, Penington JS, Di Stefano L, Tubau Ribera N, Wilcox S, Mann GB; kConFab; Papenfuss AT, Lindeman GJ, Smyth GK, Visvader JE. A single-cell RNA expression atlas of normal, preneoplastic and tumorigenic states in the human breast. EMBO J. 2021 40(11), e107333. PMID: 33950524

Lindeman GJ, Fernando TM, Bowen R, Jerzak KJ, Song X, Decker T, Boyle F, McCune S, Armstrong A, Shannon C, Bertelli G, Chang CW, Desai R, Gupta K, Wilson TR, Flechais A, Bardia A. VERONICA: Randomized phase 2 study of fulvestrant and venetoclax in ER-positive metastatic breast cancer post-CDK4/6 inhibitors – efficacy, safety, biomarker results. Clin Cancer Res. 2022 28(15), 3256-3267. PMID: 35583555

Nolan E, Lindeman GJ*, Visvader JE* Deciphering Breast Cancer: from biology to the clinic. Cell 2023 Mar 13:S0092-8674(23)00099-5. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2023.01.040. Online ahead of print. PMID: 36931265 *Equal senior author

Lab research projects

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