Dr Sharissa Latham

Dr Sharissa Latham leads the Oncogenic Signalling Group at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research and is a Conjoint Senior Lecturer at UNSW Sydney.

Sharissa completed her PhD at the University of Sydney in 2015, studying the actin cytoskeleton in extracellular vesicle shedding, followed by postdoctoral studies at Hannover Medical School, Germany, on actomyosin complexes in rare diseases. This included co-leading the characterisation of a previously undescribed actin-based disorder, ACTB-Associated Syndromic Thrombocytopenia (Latham et al., 2018, Nature Communications). In 2018, she joined A/Prof David Croucher's Network Biology Group at the Garvan Institute, where she applied her actin expertise to a phenotypic drug screen that identified selective inhibitors of cytoplasmic JNK signalling. This program has since generated several first-in-class small molecules under preclinical development.

Since establishing her independent group in 2023, Sharissa's research has focused on cellular resilience: how discrete protein-protein networks are co-opted to withstand environmental and physical stress. In cancer, her team studies how metastatic cells reconfigure discrete protein-protein complexes to support proliferative signalling. Current programs span triple-negative breast, high-grade serous ovarian, and rare appendiceal cancers, and are supported by her Cancer Institute Fellowship. In parallel, her work on immunoactinopathies examines the reverse problem: how genetic lesions in structural protein networks compromise mechanical resilience. Across both streams, her work translates phenotype into mechanism, combining phenotypic screening with orthogonal molecular and imaging approaches to define the protein-protein complexes that govern cellular resilience.