An internationally recognised researcher in experimental medicine, Dr Tapmeier joined The Ritchie Centre in August 2020 to investigate endometriosis and uterine fibroids, conditions affecting millions of women. Symptoms include severe pain, abnormal uterine bleeding, infertility and miscarriages, and new avenues of diagnosis and treatment are urgently needed.

Dr Tapmeier completed his PhD in Transplantation Immunology on the ‘Role of CD4⁺ T cells in renal fibrosis’ at King’s College London in 2009 and went to the University of Oxford for post-doctoral studies in cancer immunology funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and Cancer Research UK (CRUK). Having improved upon the existing unilateral ureteric obstruction (UUO) model of kidney disease in mice while at King’s College London, he established an intravital imaging system at Oxford to observe vascular developments in murine tumours. He also researched novel pH-based diagnostic probes (pHLIP) in mouse models of breast cancer.

In 2015, Dr Tapmeier joined the Oxford – Bayer Alliance for Women’s Health to research new avenues of treatment in endometriosis and uterine fibroids at the Endometriosis CaRe Centre within the Nuffield Department of Women’s and Reproductive Health. There, he wrote the protocol for a study into the biology of uterine fibroids and endometriosis, the ‘Fibroids and Endometriosis Oxford’ (FENOX) study (2018 – 2028, ISRCTN 13560263). His research into exosomes within peritoneal fluid was presented at the 13^th World Congress on Endometriosis (WCE) 2017 in Vancouver and is the subject of his DPhil student’s thesis at Oxford, Dr Hannah Nazri.

In 2019, Dr Tapmeier relocated to the ANU at Canberra as an Honorary Lecturer in Cancer Biology and joined the ANU’s COVID-19 response as a volunteer from March 2020 onwards.

Dr Tapmeier won the Sarah Agboolah Studentship for his PhD studies in London, travel bursaries from Amgen to attend the Renal Week meetings, and funding for lab exchanges with TcLand in Nantes, France (KCL, UK) and with Bayer AG in Berlin, Germany (MRC, UK). He won a grant for his research into exosomes from the Medical Sciences Division of the University of Oxford, and an industry collaborative grant from the Oxford – Bayer Alliance to lead the investigation into angiogenesis mechanisms in uterine fibroids. He is named as contributor to IP and patents within the Alliance.

He is a member of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) and a reviewer for Fertility and Sterility, the Journal of Extracellular Vesicles, for Experimental and Molecular Pathology, and for the Journal of Translational Medicine.

Selected publications

• Nazri HM, Imran M, Fischer R, Heilig R, Manek S, Dragovic RA, Kessler BM, Zondervan KT, Tapmeier TT*, Becker CM* (2020) Characterization of exosomes in peritoneal fluid of endometriosis patients. Fertil Steril 113:364-373.e2.

• Tapmeier TT, Nazri HM, Subramaniam KS, Manek S, Garbutt K, Flint EJ, Cheuk C, Hubbard C, Barrett K, Shepherd E, Zondervan KT, Becker CM (2020) Protocol for a longitudinal, prospective cohort study investigating the biology of uterine fibroids and endometriosis, and patients’ quality of life: the FENOX study. BMJ Open 10:e032220.

• Subramaniam KS*, Tapmeier TT*, Wang C-Y, O’Brien D, Philpott M, Manek S, Lindenthal B, Obendorf M, de Leo B, Hess-Stumpp H (2019) Alternative Angiogenesis Mechanisms in Uterine Fibroids Related to Heavy Menstrual Bleeding. In: REPRODUCTIVE SCIENCES, pp 226A-227A

• Rahmioglu N, Drong AW, Lockstone H, Tapmeier T, Hellner K, Saare M, Laisk-Podar T, Dew C, Tough E, Nicholson G, Peters M, Morris AP, Lindgren CM, Becker CM, Zondervan KT (2017) Variability of genome-wide DNA methylation and mRNA expression profiles in reproductive and endocrine disease related tissues. Epigenetics 12:897–908.

• Tapmeier TT, Becker CM (2015) Is pale the way to go to understand adenomyosis? Fertil Steril 104:1378.

• Tapmeier TT, Moshnikova A, Beech J, Allen D, Kinchesh P, Smart S, Harris A, McIntyre A, Engelman DM, Andreev OA, Reshetnyak YK, Muschel RJ (2015) The pH low insertion peptide pHLIP Variant 3 as a novel marker of acidic malignant lesions. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 112:9710–5.

• Papież BW, Tapmeier T, Heinrich MP, Muschel RJ, Schnabel JA (2014) Motion Correction of Intravital Microscopy of Preclinical Lung Tumour Imaging Using Multichannel Structural Image Descriptor. In: Ourselin S, Modat M (eds) Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics). Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 164–173

• Zhao L, Lim SY, Gordon-Weeks AN, Tapmeier TT, Im JH, Cao Y, Beech J, Allen D, Smart S, Muschel RJ (2013) Recruitment of a myeloid cell subset (CD11b/Gr1 mid ) via CCL2/CCR2 promotes the development of colorectal cancer liver metastasis*. Hepatology 57:829–839.

• Tapmeier TT, Fearn A, Brown K, Chowdhury P, Sacks SH, Sheerin NS, Wong W (2010) Pivotal role of CD4⁺ T cells in renal fibrosis following ureteric obstruction. Kidney Int 78:351–62.

• Tapmeier TT, Brown KL, Tang Z, Sacks SH, Sheerin NS, Wong W (2008) Reimplantation of the ureter after unilateral ureteral obstruction provides a model that allows functional evaluation. Kidney Int 73:885–9

• Albrecht I, Tapmeier T, Zimmermann S, Frey M, Heeg K, Dalpke A (2004) Toll-like receptors differentially induce nucleosome remodelling at the IL-12p40 promoter. EMBO Rep 5:172–177.