Improved treatments for colorectal cancer are desperately needed to eliminate tumours and prevent disease relapse. Enabling immune cells to join the fight and enhance tumor cell killing will improve patient outcomes. Dr Mielke will share the latest in immunotherapy treatments, as well as new insights for the future development of novel drugs and biomarkers targeting T cells in colorectal cancer.
Dr Wong's areas of expertise are gastrointestinal cancers and cancers of unknown primary. Her research focus is on the use of real-world data to examine treatment and outcomes in routine practice, facilitate research and improve the quality of care for patients. Over the past 10 years, she has been involved in running a large multi-centre registry collecting comprehensive treatment and outcome data for colorectal cancer.
She has also led the implementation of the registry-based randomised trials program as part of the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre’s research initiative, examining the feasibility of this pragmatic clinical trial approach to increase trial participation for cancer patients. She is currently part of a team of investigators working on a new model of care to support the earlier diagnosis of cancers of unknown primary.
Dr Lisa Mielke is a Victorian Cancer Agency Fellow and Head of the Mucosal Immunity and Cancer laboratory at the ONJCRI and La Trobe University. Dr Mielke is an expert in immune cell biology, intestinal homeostasis and gastrointestinal cancers. She completed her PhD at the University of Melbourne and National Institutes of Health and postdoctoral studies at Trinity College Dublin and the Walter & Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research. During this time, Dr Mielke led numerous studies revealing new interactions between our diet and transcriptional regulation of intestinal immune cells. These studies opened an exciting frontier of research in the field of mucosal immunology that underpin her current interest investigating the role of immune cells in gastrointestinal cancers.
