Zee Upton

Professor Zee Upton joined the Institute of Medical Biology (IMB), A STAR, as a Research Director in July 2015. She became the Deputy Executive Director – Industry in 2017, the Covering Executive Director in March 2018 and the Executive Director in 2019. In February 2020 she concurrently took on the role of Executive Director of the Skin Research Institute of Singapore (SRIS), a research partnership between Nanyang Technological University, the National Health Group and A STAR that is focussed on skin diseases in the Tropics and in Asian populations.

She is a biochemist by training, a tissue engineer, an inventor and entrepreneur, and is internationally renowned for her research in molecular, biochemical and cellular aspects related to growth factors, extracellular matrix proteins and tissue repair. Zee believes that innovation commonly arises in the “white spaces” between disciplines and actively champions interdisciplinary research.

Prior to relocating to Singapore, she was a senior research leader and research manager at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, Australia, where she held various roles, including Assistant Dean (Research) in the Faculty of Health, as well as established the Tissue Repair and Regeneration Program at QUT and the CRC for Wound Management Innovation. In Singapore she has built a similar highly inter-disciplinary consortium of researchers focussed on chronic wounds through the establishment of the pan-Singapore Wound Care Innovation for the Tropics Programme.

Selected publications

• Fan C, Lim LKP, Loh SQ, Ying Lim KY, Upton Z, Leavesley D. Application of "macromolecular crowding" in vitro to investigate the naphthoquinones shikonin, naphthazarin and related analogues for the treatment of dermal scars. Chem Biol Interact. 2019 Sep 1;310:108747. doi: 10.1016/j.cbi.2019.108747. Epub 2019 Jul 10. PMID: 31301289.
• McGovern JA, Meinert C, de Veer SJ, Hollier BG, Parker TJ, Upton Z. Attenuated kallikrein-related peptidase activity disrupts desquamation and leads to stratum corneum thickening in human skin equivalent models. Br J Dermatol. 2017 Jan;176(1):145-158. doi: 10.1111/bjd.14879. Epub 2016 Dec 22. PMID: 27442805.
• Tanzer C, Sampson DL, Broadbent JA, Cuttle L, Kempf M, Kimble RM, Upton Z, Parker TJ. Evaluation of haemoglobin in blister fluid as an indicator of paediatric burn wound depth. Burns. 2015 Aug;41(5):1114-21. doi: 10.1016/j.burns.2014.12.017. Epub 2015 Jan 28. PMID: 25637955.