Dr. Poortinga received her Ph.D. from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. where her research focused on elucidating transcriptional regulatory networks in Drosophila embryonic development. Subsequently she moved to Melbourne, Australia as a postdoctoral research fellow to work with Prof. Grant McArthur at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. Here she elucidated basic transcriptional mechanisms of the MYC/MAX oncogenic network that are deregulated in cancer cells. In 2002, together with Prof. McArthur, she began a long-standing collaboration with Prof. Ross Hannan to investigate the role of cellular growth control via RNA polymerase I (Pol I) mediated transcription of ribosomal RNA genes (rDNA) in MYC-driven cancers. She currently holds a Senior Research position at the Peter MacCallum and is an Honorary Fellow in the Sir Peter MacCallum Department of Oncology and the Department of Medicine, St. Vincent’s Hospital, University of Melbourne. Dr. Poortinga's research with Prof. Hannan and Prof. McArthur resulted in a number of key findings, including the identification of critical checkpoints that are activated by the disruption of rDNA transcription regulation and the therapeutic window this provides in a broad range of cancers (Bywater et al., Cancer Cell, 2012). Importantly, this work has formed the basis of a first-in-class phase 1 clinical trial at the Peter MacCallum of CX-5461, a novel drug that inhibits Pol I transcription. Dr. Poortinga’s research aims are currently focused on using genome-wide, next generation sequence-based approaches to investigate the fundamental role of rDNA chromatin in cancer progression and thus rationally target its vulnerabilities through combination therapies.