SEMINAR: �Low affinity receptors and poor pharmacology: the challenge of drug discovery at Free Fatty Acid G protein-coupled receptors 2 and 3."

Nicola was awarded a joint NHMRC/NHF C.J. Martin Overseas Research Fellowship in 2007 to train in the laboratory of Professor Graeme Milligan, a world expert on G protein-coupled receptors. She is 7TM-centric, with a career focussed on the dissection of receptor signalling through mutagenesis and functionally-selective ligands. After an Honours year with Professors Arthur Christopoulos and Patrick Sexton at the University of Melbourne, Nicola undertook a PhD on the mechanism of EGFR transactivation by the angiotensin receptor in cardiac hypertrophy with Professor Walter Thomas at the Baker Heart Research Institute before moving to Glasgow to examine the challenging pharmacology of low affinity orthosteric agonists and allosteric modulators at the Free Fatty Acid family of GPCRs. Her work has been cited more than 200 times and published in a number of highly ranked journals including the Journal of Biological Chemistry, Molecular Pharmacology, Hypertension and Nature Biotechnology. Concurrently, she has maintained several international collaborations and a critical presence in the review literature discussing functional selectivity and on- and off-target allosterism at GPCRs. In early 2011, Nicola joined the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute in Sydney where she is investigating the role of novel GPCRs in cardiovascular disease.