PhD in Cancer Immunology
Job No:
G121
Location:
Darlinghurst, Sydney
Project title: HARNESSING THE IMMUNE SYSTEM TO CURE BREAST CANCER
Supervisors Dr Alexander Swarbrick and Dr Simon Junankar
Breast cancer patients whose treatment successfully prevents their cancer spreading (metastasising) to other areas of the body, have a great chance of surviving the disease. Unfortunately, there are currently few treatments available once the cancer has metastasised to the skeleton, lungs, liver, brain and other organs. The surgical removal of these metastases is impossible and they lead to debilitating symptoms such as severe pain, organ failure and inevitably death.
Recent research, however, has led to a revolutionary new cancer treatment called ‘immunotherapy’ which activates the patient’s immune system against their cancer. This therapy is having a dramatic effect in the treatment of patients with advanced melanoma, lung cancer and kidney cancer, with many patients now cured. Unfortunately these drugs have not been as effective in helping breast cancer patients.
This project will investigate how breast cancer cells escape detection and destruction from immunotherapies in order to develop improved therapies that can cure metastatic breast cancers. We hypothesise that a rare group of breast cancer cells within a tumour are naturally able to evade immunotherapy and that by identifying these cells and determining how they do this, we will be able to better target them in the future.
We are looking for an enthusiastic applicant to join our multidisciplinary team of biologists, oncologists, pathologists and bioinformaticians.
This project would suit a background in cancer cell biology, physiology or immunology.