Nathalie Bock

Dr. Nathalie Bock is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Health, School of Biomedical Sciences at QUT. She leads the Bone & Tumour Bioengineering research group and is Deputy Co-Director of the Max Planck Queensland Centre (MPQC) for Materials Science of Extracellular Matrices. Her research focuses on developing bioengineered 3D models to study cancer metastasis in bone, particularly prostate and breast cancer, and translating these models into clinical applications for precision medicine.

Dr. Bock holds a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from QUT (2014) and has held prestigious fellowships, including the NHMRC Peter Doherty Early Career Fellowship (2015-2020) and the Advance Queensland Industry Research Mid-Career Fellowship (2021-2024). Her work integrates biomaterials, tissue engineering, and computational modeling to explore tumor-bone interactions and therapy response.

Her research interests include biomimetic tissue models, extracellular matrix dynamics, and personalized therapy guidance. Key projects involve engineering bone metastatic environments to study antiandrogen therapies and developing hydrogel-based platforms for high-throughput drug testing.

Dr. Bock’s awards include the STEMM Diversity and Inclusion Award (2020) and the Young Investigator Award from Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (2015). She collaborates with industry partners like JJ Richards & Sons and has secured funding from ARC, NHMRC, and philanthropic organizations such as Lush UK and Cure Cancer.

Her lab, based at the Translational Research Institute (TRI), emphasizes reproducible biomanufacturing of hydrogels and focuses on translating findings to clinical applications. Current projects aim to define osteocyte-lacunocanalicular network properties and optimize biomaterials for bone regeneration and infection prevention.