Malaghan scientists awarded Research for Life grants

Dr Nathaniel Dasyam, postdoctoral research fellow in the Weinkove Lab received a research grant to fund a project investigating the conditional expression of support molecules for chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapies.

“CAR T-cell treatment works by taking a patient’s own immune cells, reprogramming them to recognise cancer cells, and returning them to the body to attack the disease,” says Dr Dasyam. “It can be life-changing, but some tumours push back or send “stop signals” that weaken the therapy.

“This project aims to overcome these stop signals, the tuning of which must be highly controlled to avoid toxicities. I will test new targeted CAR designs in the lab to help CAR T-cells keep working for longer and stay effective in tough tumour environments, with the goal of improving benefits while keeping treatment safe.

Brigitta Mester, Process Development Manager in the Weinkove Lab, received a travel grant to attend the International Society of Cell and Gene Therapy (ISCT) annual conference in Dublin, Ireland, while Jessica Cotterel, PhD Student in the Connor Lab, was awarded funding to attend the Keystone Symposia on B and T Cell Collaboration in Lymphoid and Non-lymphoid Microenvironments in Colorado, USA.