Dr Christina Lucato

Christina is a registered Patent and Trade Mark Attorney.  Her work focuses on drafting and prosecting patent applications, although she is also heavily involved in patent litigation matters, design patents, and validity and freedom to operate analyses.

Christina joined POF in 2023, after several years in scientific research exploring the molecular drivers of cancer, autoimmune conditions, and neurodegenerative diseases.  After a BSc (Hons) at Monash University, majoring in biochemistry, molecular biology, and chemistry, Christina completed her PhD studies, looking into the structure of protein signalling complexes involved in cancer metastasis.  Christina was awarded the Stewart Stone Medal for her Honours research and the Monash Jubilee Medal for her PhD studies.

Following her academic career, she spent 5 years in biotech R&D, first in the UK at Immunocore – a company pioneering T cell receptor-based immunotherapies – and subsequently in Melbourne at oNKo-innate – developing NK cell-focused biologics and cellular therapies.  Throughout her research, she has worked and published an array of technical areas, including protein design, purification, and characterisation; molecular and cellular imaging; directed molecular evolution; primary cell isolation, culture and profiling; and testing in animal models.

Christina remains actively engaged with the biotech sector and, while at POF, has worked on secondment in-house to a large Australian health technology company, lectured in biotechnology at the University of Melbourne, and mentored at IMNIS.