Nathalie Bock
Dr Nathalie Bock is an MCR Advance Queensland Industry Research Fellow, at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), currently leading the Bone & Tumour Bioengineering research group at the Translational Research Institute (TRI, Brisbane, Australia). Dr Bock’s research seeks to develop 3D biomimetic tissue model systems for in vitro and in vivo use, employing biomaterials and tissue engineering technologies, to study the biological processes of the bone organ and tumours in this microenvironment.
Dr Bock research interests are to understand the role of cell-cell and cell-ECM interactions in modulating normal and pathological states in bone, with a current focus on primary cells, differentiated into cells from the bone niche, including osteoblasts, osteocytes, osteoclasts and adipocytes. In her past NHMRC ECR fellowship work developing osteoblast mineralised models to replicate in vitro the metastatic human bone microenvironment in prostate cancer, Dr Bock’s work contributed to quantitatively delineating the dynamic adaptive response of androgen-deprived prostate cancer in this microenvironment and unravelled cancer cell osteomimicry mechanisms using patient-derived-xenografts.
In 2022, Dr Bock was appointed as the Deputy Director of the Max Planck Queensland Centre for the Materials Science of Extracellular Matrices, where she leads a 5-year research program looking at defining the network architecture, composition, and transport properties of the osteocyte lacunocanalicular network and validation through biomimetic tissue engineering.
Abstracts this author is presenting: