Vihandha Wickramasinghe

Biography

Doctor Vihandha Wickramasinghe is Head of the RNA Biology and Cancer Laboratory. He grew up in Canberra and was awarded a prestigious Melbourne National Scholarship to undertake his undergraduate and honours degrees in Biomedical Science at the University of Melbourne. Following this, he was awarded a highly prestigious Medical Research Council pre-doctoral fellowship to undertake his PhD studies at the University of Cambridge with Professor Ron Laskey, FRS and CBE. During his subsequent post-doctoral studies at the MRC Cancer Unit in Cambridge with Professor Ashok Venkitaraman, he established his current research program investigating the molecular mechanisms that regulate selectivity of the mRNA processing machinery and their emerging links to cancer. This research demonstrated for the first time that selective mRNA export from the nucleus can regulate a fundamental biological process, namely DNA repair. This key step in the gene expression pathway that links mRNA transcription in the nucleus with translation into protein in the cytoplasm is a new and original area of endeavor with translational and clinical potential. He is also an Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Sir Peter MacCallum Department of Oncology at the University of Melbourne.

Research Interest

His current research program investigating the molecular mechanisms that regulate selectivity of the mRNA processing machinery and their emerging links to cancer