Protein crystallography; structure-based drug design; cancer; infection; neurobiology
My research focuses on three disease areas: cancer, infection (bacterial toxins, parasites and viruses) and neurological diseases neurodegenerative diseases (including Alzheimer’s, Lewy Body Dementia and Parkinson’s diseases, motor neuron disease, multiple sclerosis, chronic fatigue syndrome).
My laboratory’s aim is to understand the function of key proteins at a molecular level and to discover small molecules that alter the function of these proteins which may then be developed into clinically useful drugs. We use a wide array of platform technologies, including: molecular biology, protein chemistry, protein characterisation tools, X-ray crystallography (including the Australian Synchrotron), cryo-electron microscopy, NMR, virtual screening and structure-based drug design.
Key achievements
2021 NHMRC Leadership Fellowship
2016 NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellowship; Bob Robertson Award of the Australian Society for Biophysics for outstanding contributions to biophysics in Australia and New Zealand
2015 Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences
2014 NHMRC Research Excellence Award for top ranked Program grant application
2012 Federation of Asian and Oceanian Biochemists and Molecular Biologists Award for Research Excellence
2011 ASBMB Lemberg Medal; NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellowship; Ramaciotti Medal for Excellence in Biomedical Research
2010 Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science
2006 Australian Research Council Federation Fellowship; NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellowship
2004 GE Healthcare Bio-Sciences Award of the ASBMB
2001 NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellowship
2000 Australian Research Council Professorial Research Fellowship
1999 Gottschalk Medal of the Australian Academy of Science
1997 Australian Research Council Senior Research Fellowship
1996 ASBMB Boehringer-Mannheim Medallist
1994 University of Melbourne Selwyn-Smith Medical Research Prize
1991 Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellowship
Selected publications
Parker, M.W., Pattus, F., Tucker, A.D. & Tsernoglou, D. (1989) Structure of the membrane-pore-forming fragment of colicin A. Nature 337, 93-96. DOI: 10.1038/337093a0
Hu, S.H., Parker, M.W., Lei, J.Y., Wilce, M.C., Benian, G.M. & Kemp, B.E. (1994) Insights into autoregulation from the crystal structure of twitchin kinase. Nature 369, 581-584. DOI: 10.1038/369581a0
Polekhina, G., House, C.M., Traficante, N., Mackay, J.P., Relaix, F., Sassoon, D.A., Parker, M.W. & Bowtell, D.D.L. (2002) The Siah ubiquitin ligase is structurally related to TRAF and modulates TNF-alpha signaling. Nature Struct. Biol. 9, 68-75. DOI: 10.1038/nsb743
Nero, T.N., Morton, C.J., Holien, J.K., Wielens, J. & Parker, M.W. (2014) Oncogenic protein interfaces: small molecules, big challenges. Nature Revs. Cancer 14, 248-262. DOI: 10.1038/nrc3690
Baell, J.B., Leaver, D., Cleary, B., Nguyen, N., Downer, L.D., Vanyai, H.K., Bergamasco, M.I., May, R.E., Wang, B., Wilcox, S., Garnham, A., Pacini, G., Zamudio, N., Sheikh, B.N., Doggett, K., Mieruszynski, S., Heath, J.K., Chung, M.C., Hermans, S.J., Parker, M.W., de Silva, M., Lagiakos, H.R., Bentley, J., Pilling, P., Hattarki, M., Dolezal, O., Falk, H., Smyth, G.K., Street, I.P., Monahan, B.J., Peat, T.S., Voss, A.K. & Thomas, T. (2018) Inhibitors of histone lysine acetyltransferases KAT6A/B induce senescence and arrest tumour growth. Nature 560, 253-257. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0387-5
Zeller, J., Cheung Tung Shing, K.S., Nero, T.L., McFadyen, J.D., Krippner, G., Bogner, B., Kreuzaler, S., Kiefer, J., Horner, V.K., Braig, D., Danish, H., Baratchi, S., Fricke, M., Wang, X., Kather, M.G., Kammerer, B., Woollard, K.J., Sharma, P., Morton, C.J., Pietersz, G., Parker, M.W., Peter, K. & Eisenhardt, S.U. (2022) A novel phosphocholine-mimetic inhibits a pro-inflammatory conformational change of C-reactive protein. EMBO Mol. Med., in press.
ORCID profile: https://orcid.org/my-orcid?orcid=0000-0002-3101-1138
Google Scholar profile: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ZrUEdmcAAAAJ&hl=en