In this webinar, early-career researchers Marina Yakou and Dr Thomas Burn will highlight cutting-edge approaches that set the stage for next-generation targeted immunotherapies, offering fresh hope for precision and greater efficacy in cancer treatment. Don’t miss this opportunity to discover how these advances could reshape the future of cancer care.
Marina will present on the topic, "Tissue-dependent dichotomy in IL-15 mediated anti-tumour immunity" and Dr Burn will present on the topic, "Leveraging T cell residency in tumours for enhanced cancer control".
Speakers
Marina Yakou is a final-year PhD candidate specialising in cancer immunology and the microbiome. Following her undergraduate studies in biological sciences, Marina completed an honours research project at Monash University and the Hudson Institute of Medical Research under A/Prof Sam Forster, where her research focused on characterising novel antimicrobial products from the human gastrointestinal microbiome. Her PhD research, supervised by Dr Lisa Mielke, A/Prof Forster, and Prof Matthias Ernst, examines tissue-specific immune responses in colorectal cancer.
Marina's research findings highlighting the critical role of the transcription factor, TCF-1, as a molecular checkpoint in gamma delta T cell immunity to colorectal cancer, have since been published as a first-author paper in the journal, Science Immunology. Marina’s achievements have been recognised by multiple awards from organisations such as Harold Mitchell Foundation, L'Oréal-UNESCO, Tour de Cure Australia, and Royal Society of Victoria. More recently, Marina was the 2024 recipient of the VCCC Picchi Brothers Foundation Award for Excellence in Cancer Research.
Dr Thomas Burn completed his PhD in Immunology at the University of Pennsylvania in 2020, where he was a Fulbright Scholar investigating the development of autoimmunity and CD8 T cell-mediated autoinflammatory diseases. Following his PhD, Tom joined Professor Laura Mackay’s lab at the University of Melbourne as a postdoctoral fellow in 2020.
Here, his research centres on elucidating the developmental and functional differences between tissue-resident memory T cells and exhausted T cells in tumours. Through this work, Tom aims to identify innovative immunotherapeutic approaches that precisely target tissue-resident memory T cells, complementing existing treatments to improve patient outcomes.
