Dr Cristina Keightley is a Senior Lecturer and Director of the Holsworth Cancer Research Initiative based in the Holsworth Biomedical Research Centre at the La Trobe Rural Health School, Bendigo, and is a member of the La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science.

Prior to establishing her independent program of research, Cristina investigated the molecular basis of cortisol resistance during her PhD at Monash University, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX under the supervision of Prof Nancy Weigel where she examined alternate pathways of progesterone receptor activation in cancer. On returning to Melbourne, Cristina joined the laboratory of Prof Graham Lieschke at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and subsequently the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute where she spearheaded the use of CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing to create zebrafish disease models of immune cell deficiency.

Following her lifelong interest in gene regulation in disease, the Keightley laboratory studies the functional role of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) in cancer development and progression. RNA, commonly known as a molecule read from DNA, carries the code for proteins. However, there are many more RNA molecules whose code doesn’t result in proteins, called noncoding RNAs, and these highly structured molecules have important functions in their RNA form. The lab uses human cellular systems with genomics, genome editing, biochemistry and super resolution microscopy to examine and uncover lncRNA functions in normal cell development and cancer with the ultimate aim of bringing lncRNA therapeutics into the clinic.