Three 2025 Picchi Award for Excellence in Cancer Research recipients present their PhD research:
Clinical Science category winner Dr Hannah Walker will share here thesis, "BREATH: Breathe Easier after Allogeneic Transplantation (Haematopoietic) - Pulmonary biological profiling in children post allogeneic haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HCT): Understanding infectious and non-infectious complications." Her thesis explores the poor outcomes of children post-stem cell transplant (called haematopoietic stem cell transplant, or HCT) who develop lung complications. While HCT could cure children’s cancer, her research has highlighted that lung infections and inflammatory complications increased the chance of mortality after HCT at least four-fold. She designed and led the ‘BREATH’ study, involving multi-omic inflammatory profiling of children before and after HCT.
Basic Science category winner Kah Min Yap will share her research on "Identifying Optimal Tumour-specific Promoters for CRISPR/Cas9 Engineering of Armoured CAR T Cells with Enhanced Safety and Efficacy". Her research has shown that these CRISPR-engineered armoured CAR T cells perform better and are safer than standard CAR T cells. These preclinical findings have led to an international patent, funding from the National Breast Cancer Foundation and the Cancer Research Institute (US), as well as multiple collaborations. The long-term goal is to initiate a clinical trial in multiple myeloma patients, with plans to eventually expand into solid tumour indications. This technique has the potential to replace conventional manufacturing methods and generate armoured CAR T cells with a more favourable safety profile for clinical translation.
Population Health category winner Anu Mary Oommen is a public health physician working in the Department of Community Medicine, Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore, a not-for profit hospital in Tamil Nadu, south India. She has operated a population-based cervical and breast cancer screening program since 2014 for rural areas surrounding the hospital, where she is seeking to improve screening rates. Anu will present her thesis, "Co-designing and testing scalable programmatic approaches to HPV-based cervical screening in vulnerable populations in India - implementation research". Her PhD is the formative phase of the SHE-CAN trial – a collaboration between CMC Vellore, the Australian Centre for Prevention of Cervical Cancer (ACPC), and others including the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, funded by the Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases.
