2021 Outstanding Toxicologist Award for Women—Winner Announced

The editorial team of Toxins (ISSN: 2072-6651) is pleased to announce the winner of the 2021 Outstanding Toxicologist Award for Women: Christina Schroeder, at the National Cancer Institute, NIH, USA.

Dr. Schroeder’s research focuses on biodiscovery and peptide engineering in venom-derived toxins to investigate ion channels involved in pain and cancer. She completed her Ph.D. in Pharmacology at the University of Queensland, Australia, on the structure–activity relationships of omega-conotoxins targeting calcium channels. She completed her postdoctoral training at the Scripps Research Institute, USA, the University of Queensland, and the University of New South Wales, Australia. In 2014 she was granted research funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, Australia, and in 2017 she was awarded a Future Fellowship from the Australian Research Council, allowing her to pursue independent research at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, at the University of Queensland. She has published more than 80 articles on the discovery, structure, and function of animal toxins targeting ion channels and submitted 28 NMR-obtained toxin structures to the PDB. Her most noteworthy work contributed to the understanding of the importance of toxin–membrane binding for sodium channel inhibition and the development of bivalent toxins with dual pharmacology, specifically targeting sodium channels involved in pain. In 2020, she joined the Chemical Biology Laboratory at the National Cancer Institute, NIH, USA, as a Stadtman investigator, and she holds an adjunct Associate Professor position at the University of Queensland, Australia.

We would like to congratulate the winner in recognition of her excellence in research related to toxicology. We look forward to her future academic contributions.