Cancer is one of the most deadly diseases, highlighting the importance to develop novel therapeutics to improve the survival of patients. A new and very promising approach is cancer immunotherapy. Immune checkpoint blocking antibodies are achieving remarkable responses in a fraction of cancer patients across several tumour types. However, many patients do not respond or acquire resistance.
The Oncology and Cellular Immunology Laboratory is particularly interested in how innate immune cells contribute to resistance to current immunotherapies. Its team aims to understand the cellular and molecular mechanism to identify novel targets. For this, genetically engineered and transplantable mouse models of cancer, state-of-the art flow cytometry, imaging as well as next generation sequencing techniques are commonly used.
CURRENT RESEARCH
- phenotypic plasticity of Neutrophils in infection and cancer
- interaction between innate lymphoid cells and neutrophils in cancer
- targeting immune suppressive neutrophils to improve cancer immunotherapy
- phenotypic plasticity of innate lymphoid cells
Internal Collaborators
- Professor Mark Smyth, Immunology in Cancer & Infection Lab
- Professor Rajiv Khanna, Tumour Immunology Lab
- Professor Christian Engwerda, Immunology and Infection Lab
- Associate Professor Steven Lane, Gilmour Leukaemia Research Lab
- Associate Professor Michele Teng, Cancer Immunoregulation and Immunotherapy Lab
- Associate Professor Andreas Moller, Tumour Microenvironment Lab
- Dr Corey Smith, Translational and Human Immunology Lab
- Dr Kelli MacDonald, Antigen Presentation and Immunoregulation
- Dr Nic Waddell, Medical Genomics
External Collaborators
- Professor Lukas Flatz, Institute of Immunobiology, Kantonsspital, St Gallen
- Professor Michael Holzel, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms University, Bonn Germany
- Professor Thomas Tueting, Otto-von-Guericke University, Magdeburg, Germany
- Professor Dirk Schadendorf, University Hospital Essen, Germany
- Professor Christoffer Gebhardt, University Hospital Hamburg, Germany
- Professor Massimiliano Mazzone, VIB, Leuven, Belgium
- Professor Wolfgang Kastenmueller, Max Planck Institute for Systems Immunology, Wuerzburg, Germany
- Professor Georgina Long, Melanoma Institute Australia
- Professor Richard Scoyler, Melanoma Institute Australia
- Prof Shain Naik, Walter and Elizabeth Hall Institute
- Dr Markus Hofer, University of Sydney
- National Health and Medical Research Council (Project Grant, Fellowship)
- QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute
- European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO)