Sally-Ann Poulsen is an Australian chemical biologist who is a Professor and Director at Griffith University. Her research considers medicinal chemistry and drug discovery. She is Chair of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute Medicinal Chemistry and Chemical Biology Division.

Early life and education

Poulsen grew up in a rural community in Australia. She attended a small primary school of only seventeen students and one teacher. She was the highest achieving student of her school. After completing high school, Poulsen got a job, and eventually decided to go to university. Poulsen was an undergraduate student at Griffith University, where she was a university medallist. She was the first member of her family to complete higher education. During her bachelor's degree she started to study pyrazolo ,4-d

pyrimidine Pyrimidine (; ) is an aromatic, heterocyclic, organic compound similar to pyridine (). One of the three diazines (six-membered heterocyclics with two nitrogen atoms in the ring), it has nitrogen atoms at positions 1 and 3 in the ring. The other ...

s. As an undergraduate student, Poulsen was part of the

National Youth Science Forum The National Youth Science Forum (NYSF) is a summer school programme dedicated to year eleven students who are heading into year twelve and are thinking about a career in science, engineering and related disciplines to major scientific institut ...

. Poulsen remained at Griffith University for her graduate studies, where she continued to study pyrimidines, looking for structure-function relationships in their binding to

adenosine Adenosine ( symbol A) is an organic compound that occurs widely in nature in the form of diverse derivatives. The molecule consists of an adenine attached to a ribose via a β-N9-glycosidic bond. Adenosine is one of the four nucleoside building ...

receptors. After earning her doctorate, Poulsen moved to the United Kingdom, where she was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge and AstraZeneca. She proposed that adenosine receptors offered novel opportunities of drug design.

Research and career

Poulsen returned to Australia, where she joined the University of Queensland as a Royal Society National Health and Medical Research Council research fellow. After ten months at Queensland, Poulsen returned to Griffith University as an

Australian Research Council The Australian Research Council (ARC) is the primary non-medical research funding agency of the Australian Government, distributing more than in grants each year. The Council was established by the ''Australian Research Council Act 2001'', ...

Queen Elizabeth Fellow. She was made an ARC Future Fellow in 2012, and promoted to Professor in 2014. Poulsen's research considers medicinal chemistry and drug discovery. She leads

fragment-based lead discovery Fragment-based lead discovery (FBLD) also known as fragment-based drug discovery (FBDD) is a method used for finding lead compounds as part of the drug discovery process. Fragments are small organic molecules which are small in size and low in mol ...

, which looks to identify potent compounds from fragments that weakly bind to targets. Amongst various medical conditions, Poulsen investigated drug resistant brain cancer. Such cancers are typically treated with

temozolomide Temozolomide (TMZ), sold under the brand name Temodar among others, is a medication used to treat brain tumors such as glioblastoma and anaplastic astrocytoma. Text was copied from this source which is © European Medicines Agency. Reproduction i ...

, but they can become resistant over time. Poulsen demonstrated that it is possible to reverse this resistance by blocking the proteins alongside pumps on the surface of glioblastoma cells, which allow the temozolomide to exit the glioblastoma before it reaches high enough levels to destroy the cancer. In March 2021 Poulsen was appointed Deputy Director of the Griffith Institute for Drug Discovery. She is an Associate Editor of

MedChemComm ''MedChemComm'' (in full: ''Medicinal Chemistry Communications'') is a peer-reviewed scientific journal publishing original (primary) research and review articles on all aspects of medicinal chemistry, including drug discovery, pharmacology and p ...

Selected publications

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Poulsen, Sally-Ann Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Australian biologists Griffith University alumni Academic staff of the University of Queensland Academic staff of Griffith University Australian women biologists Academic journal editors 21st-century Australian biologists 21st-century Australian scientists 21st-century Australian women scientists