The 4th VCCC Alliance Postdoctoral Symposium: Advances in Cancer Research this Friday will showcase some of the most exciting developments from early and mid-career researchers in basic, translational, and clinical research nationwide.
Due to COVID-19, the popular event will take place virtually for the first time, giving Victorian researchers a rare opportunity to compare notes with peers from across the country.
The theme, Advances in Cancer Research, promises insights into cancer genomics, immunology, translational research, novel therapies, clinical research, and single-cell and spatial profiling.
Dr Anna Trigos is a Peter Mac Lea Medal winner and was awarded the Joseph Sambrook prize for Research Excellence and will speak in the first session of the day – Genomics, Single-cell and Spatial Profiling sponsored by GenScript. Dr. Trigos is working on understanding late-stage metastatic prostate cancers that have stopped responding to all standard therapies.
“We are trying to understand what makes these cancers so resistant to treatment, compared to other prostate cancers that generally respond well.”
Dr Trigos is using a combination of state-of-the-art technologies, single-cell and spatial profiling, to address this question. “Our hypothesis is that there are distinct subtypes of cancer cells even within one cancer, which then work together to overcome treatment. Besides these, there will also be normal cells surrounding the tumour that help it avoid treatment”.
To tackle this complexity, Dr Trigos uses computational biology to analyse the big data generated from looking at thousands of genes and cells individually and identifies patterns in the data. By understanding the distinct cells found in tumours, she aims to develop novel treatments that are aware of the tumour ecosystem, rather than just targeting one individual cell type, providing a new generation of treatment options for patients with advanced metastatic prostate cancer.
In the afternoon, Dr Jessica Da Gama Duarte from the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute will be one of four speakers looking at Immunotherapy and Clinical Research. Dr Duarte is currently working on a cutting-edge immunotherapy clinical trial that is providing access to life-saving treatments for patients with rare cancers. Collectively, rare cancers are not so rare, representing 20-25 per cent of all cancer diagnoses however, overall treatment outcomes tend to be poor compared to patients with common malignancies.
The ONJ2016-001 trial is a highly successful combination immunotherapy clinical trial that enrolled 120 patients into three ‘baskets’ - rare upper gastrointestinal, neuroendocrine and gynaecological cancers at five clinical sites: Austin Health, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Monash Health, Border Medical Oncology and Blacktown Hospital.
Dr Duarte is investigating blood-based biomarkers of immune engagement to predict the likelihood of response and toxicity to immunotherapy. She is excited to be involved in such a successful study.
“Whilst we are focussing on rare cancers, there is tremendous scope for our findings to apply to a broad range of cancers.”
As one of the symposium organisers, she is looking forward to Friday.
“We are also thrilled to have a panel of consumers attending the Symposium. The patient perspective is crucial to our work, so it is wonderful to have them involved.”
The selection of Dr Trigos and Dr Duarte as speakers reflects the high calibre of work that will be showcased for the Postdoctoral Symposium. It also highlights the quality of abstracts that were submitted by early career researchers across Australia and made selection very difficult for the organising committee who are delighted to be able to provide a platform for this research to still be showcased in the form of flashtalks and a poster session.
The 2021 organising committee come from the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, University of Melbourne, VCCC Alliance and WEHI. Members are Dale Garsed, Laure Talarmain, Oguzhan Baltaci, Rita Busuttil, Kirsty Carey, Dineika Chandrananda, Pilar Dominguez, Jessica Duarte, Lahiru Gangoda, Rae Farnsworth, Laura Forrest, William Hamilton, Eric Joo, Kathleen Pishas, Angela Pizzolla, Ashleigh Poh, Clare Slaney, Anna Trigos, and Nienke Zomerdijk.
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Read more on the VCCC Alliance website
Image: Networking at previous postdoctoral symposium
