INVITED SPEAKERS
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A/Prof Marie-Liesse Asselin-Labat PharmD, PhD, Viertel Senior Medical Research Fellow, is Joint-Head of the Personalised Oncology Division at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne. She completed her PhD at the University Paris XI in 2004 and pursued post-doctoral work at the WEHI before starting her independent research program in 2011. Her lab studies how distinct lung immune micro-environments activated by environmental exposure influences tumour cells behaviour in lung cancer. She aims to identify targetable pathways to increase the immunogenicity of tumour cells in non-small lung cancer. She has received multiple awards, including the L’Oréal For Women in Science Fellowship and the Australian Academy of Science Nancy Millis Medal.
A/Prof Marie-Liesse Asselin-Labat
Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research
PRESENTING: Early immune pressure initiated by tissue-resident memory T cells sculpts tumour evolution in non-small cell lung cancer
Assoc. Prof. Beavis completed his PhD at Imperial College London in 2010 and joined Peter Mac shortly thereafter to work in the Cancer Immunology Program, forming an independent research group in 2018.
His team has a significant interest in developing novel CAR T cell technology to enhance their effectiveness in solid cancers, guided by the philosophy that engagement of host immunity is key for effective responses. Their work has been published in leading journals including Nature Immunology, The Journal of Clinical Investigation and Nature Communications
Paul holds a Mid-Career Fellowship from the Victorian Cancer Agency and his work is supported by funding from NHMRC, Cancer Australia, NBCF and Cancer Council Victoria.
A/Prof. Paul Beavis
Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre
PRESENTING: CRISPR/Cas9 Engineering of Next-generation Armoured CAR T Cells
Sammy holds a medical degree from the Hannover Medical School in Germany and heads a laboratory at the Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Melbourne, having previously held positions at the Walter & Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne, the National Institute of Neuroscience in Tokyo and the Hannover Medical School in Germany. He is currently the Director of Research in the School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Melbourne. Sammy’s research seeks to advance our understanding of how immune responses are initiated, tailored to the specific conditions associated with a given infections or disease, and eventually tuned down when the initial threat is overcome. While his work focusses on the fundamental underlying principles, ongoing efforts seek to apply these insights to the development of better therapies against infections and cancer.
Prof Sammy Bedoui
The University of Melbourne
PRESENTING: Microbiota-induced responsiveness of CD8+ T cells to cancer immunotherapy
A/Prof Boyle (Snow Fellow 2024, CSL Centenary Fellow 2023) is a Working Group head at the Burnet Institute, leading the Cellular Responses to Disease and Vaccination team. Michelle completed her PhD in 2012 at the University of Melbourne, where she developed new methods to study the invasion blood stage form of the malaria parasite, known as P. falciparum merozoites. A/Prof Boyle has applied these methods to understand the mechanisms of naturally acquired and vaccine-induced antibodies that protect from malaria. This research demonstrated that the vast majority of human antibodies require interaction with complement to prevent parasite growth, and that complement-fixing antibodies are strongly associated with protection from malaria. Following her PhD, A/Prof Boyle pursued her post-doctoral training at the University of California, San Francisco, where she focused on investigating the role of T cells in naturally acquired immunity to malaria in children from areas of low and high malaria transmission in Uganda. This research revealed that regulatory CD4+ T cell responses can disrupt protective immunity in children with high malaria exposure. In 2018, A/Prof Boyle was recruited to QIMR Berghofer as an EMBL-Australia Group Leader program. This program focuses on identifying the cellular mechanisms underpinning antibody development, and how these processes are disrupted by malaria infection. A/Prof is using this knowledge to identify and test host directed therapies that can redirect the immune response to malaria to enhance protective immunity.
A/Prof Michelle Boyle
The Burnet Institute
PRESENTING: Host-directed Treatment to Improve Anti-parasitic Immunity to Malaria
Professor Dawson is a Physician-Scientist, Program Head, and an Associate Director of Research at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. He graduated with a medical degree from the University of Melbourne in 1999, and subsequently trained as a haematologist in Melbourne, Australia. After his clinical training, he was awarded a prestigious General Sir John Monash Fellowship and Cambridge Commonwealth Trust Fellowship, which he used to complete his PhD at the University of Cambridge. Following his PhD, as the top ranked candidate in the UK for a Wellcome Trust Fellowship, he was awarded the inaugural Wellcome Beit Prize Fellowship to pursue his research into epigenetic regulation of leukaemia stem cells. He returned to Melbourne in 2014 where his current research interest is studying chromatin regulation in haematopoiesis and cancer. His research has helped define key molecular mechanisms that underpin the initiation, maintenance, and progression of cancer. These insights have led to the development of several first-in-class epigenetic therapies that have been translated into various clinical trials across the world. He is a Professor at the University of Melbourne, the Sir Edward Dunlop Fellow for the Cancer Council of Victoria and a HHMI International Scholar. In recognition of his research achievements, he has been awarded several awards and prizes including the McCulloch & Till Award from the International Society of Experimental Hematology and the Prime Ministers Prize for Science as Life Scientist of the Year 2020. He has been elected to the Australian Academy of Science, Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences and the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO).
Prof Mark Dawson
Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre
PRESENTING: Epigenetic mechanisms of malignant clonal dominance and immune evasion
Dr. Behnaz Heydarchi is an immunologist with a strong expertise in developing novel therapeutic and prophylactic antibodies. She earned her PhD from the University of Melbourne in 2016. During her subsequent 4-year postdoctoral tenure at the Peter Doherty Institute, she made remarkable advancements in generating highly potent therapeutics and prophylactics targeting infectious diseases. In 2020, she joined the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, where she and her team are focused to understand the mechanism of Haemolytic Disease (HDN) of the Newborn. The goal is to enhance maternal-fetal health outcomes by developing novel antibodies for prevention of HDN.
Dr Behnaz Heydarchi
Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research
PRESENTING: Mining the human immune repertoire to prevent haemolytic disease of the newborn
Dr Jennifer Juno is a T cell immunologist with a particular interest in antiviral immunity and vaccination. Her group focuses on the role of T follicular helper cells in regulating immune responses to vaccination, as well as understanding the role of unconventional T cells in protective immunity from chronic diseases. Originally from Canada, she was awarded her PhD in 2014 from the University of Manitoba, where she studied iNKT cell dysfunction during HIV infection. Following a two year Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Public Health Agency of Canada, she moved to Melbourne to join the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity. Jennifer now leads a dynamic team of PhD students, research assistants and junior postdoctoral researchers.
Dr Jennifer Juno
Peter Doherty Institute
PRESENTING: Immunotherapeutic potential of gamma delta T cells
Professor Loi is a Medical Oncologist specialized in breast cancer treatment as well as a clinician scientist (group leader) with expertise in genomics, immunology and drug development at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne, Australia. She is recognised internationally as a leading clinician scientist whose work has led to new insights into the breast cancer immunology field as well as leading international clinical trials in breast cancer immunotherapy.
To date, she has published over 300 peer-reviewed research articles with a lifetime H-index of >100. Her recent work has been highly influential: she is ranked in the top 1% of highly cited researchers globally by the Web of Science. She Co-Chairs the International Breast Cancer Study Group (IBCSG) based in Bern, Switzerland, one of the largest global academic breast cancer trial cooperative groups. She is a current holder of the Inaugural National Breast Cancer Foundation (NBCF) of Australia Endowed Chair and in 2021 received one the Prime Ministers’ Awards for Science.
Prof Sherene Loi
Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre
PRESENTING: The immune infiltrate in breast cancer and relevance for prognosis and checkpoint inhibition
Dr Klein is a medical oncologist and clinician-scientist at the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute with a longstanding interest/expertise in both laboratory and clinical cancer immunology. He has worked for twenty years in the field of cancer immunotherapy, initially conducting cancer vaccine research and subsequently participating in the first clinical trials using anti-CTLA-4 and anti-PD-1 antibodies in patients with advanced melanoma.
Dr Klein is the Immuno-oncology lead at the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Centre where he is the lead investigator on several immunotherapy trials and participates on translational research that focuses on identifying biological correlates of response to immunotherapy using checkpoint blockade. He has a particular interest in the treatment of cutaneous malignancies and rare cancers and pioneered clinical trials using nivolumab and ipilimumab combination immunotherapy in patients with rare cancers.
Dr Oliver Klein
Oliva Newton John Cancer Research Institute
Prof Seth Masters is head of the Inflammasomes and Autoinflammatory Disease laboratory at The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute. He has uncovered the genetic basis for several autoinflammatory diseases and continues to manage the associated Australian Registry, AADRY. Mechanistically this work has defined the role of inflammasome sensors such as NLRP1 and NLRC4 in IBD, and the cGAS/STING pathway in ALS. Prof Masters is a Scientific Advisor for NRG Therapeutics and Odyssey Therapeutics, holds a joint appointment at the Guangzhou Women’s and Children’s Hospital (China), and is appointed as a Fellow of the Viertel Foundation, HHMI-Wellcome Trust and the NHMRC.
Prof Seth Masters
Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research
PRESENTING: New mutations causing type I IFN mediated disease
I received my PhD in 2007 from the University of Hohenheim (Stuttgart, Germany), followed by post-doctoral appointments at the University Clinics Tuebingen (Germany) and from 2009-2014 at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne. My work there was focussed on hematological malignancies expressing mutant JAK2, supported by a German Research Foundation fellowship, NHMRC and Cancer Council Victoria grants. Since 2014 I have been working as research project manager for the Immunology and Diabetes Unit at St Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research (SVI), being involved in pre-clinical and clinical research projects related to islet transplantation, including for the CTM CRC (Cell Therapy Manufacturing Cooperative Research Centre), and pre-clinical testing of small molecule inhibitors for the prevention and treatment of type 1 diabetes. I received the Susan Alberti Medical Research Foundation Women in Research Award in 2018. In my current role I manage the BANDIT (Baricitinib in new-onset type 1 diabetes) clinical trial and am co-project manager for the Australasian T1D Immunotherapy Collaborative (ATIC).
Dr Michaela Waibel
St Vincent’s Institute
PRESENTING: Testing JAK inhibitors in type 1 diabetes – the BANDIT study
Jason is a gastroenterologist with a clinical and research interest in coeliac disease, a common chronic immune illness. He heads the Coeliac Research Laboratory at WEHI and runs a coeliac clinic at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. His research evaluates gluten immunity in people with coeliac disease with the goal of developing and testing novel diagnostic, immunomonitoring and therapeutic approaches. He and his team work closely with industry partners to advance coeliac disease drug development.
A/Prof Jason Tye Din
Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research
PRESENTING: Resetting gluten immunity: lessons from the first immunotherapy trial in coeliac disease
Prof Menno van Zelm obtained his PhD from the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands (2007), and held postdoc positions at the University of California San Diego (USA) and the Erasmus MC (the Netherlands), prior to becoming Lab Head at the Erasmus MC (2010). In 2015, he was recruited to Monash University and the Alfred Hospital. He heads the Allergy and Clinical Immunology laboratory, has published >165 papers in international peer-reviewed journals, and is co-inventor on several patent applications. In 2019, he developed technology to detect antigen-specific B-cells in collaboration with Prof Robyn O’Hehir (Alfred Health) and Prof P. Mark Hogarth (Burnet Institute), and currently applies this to evaluate B-cell memory in allergies (NHMRC Ideas grant) and infectious disease, including SARS-CoV2 (MRFF grant).
Prof Menno van Zelm
Monash University
PRESENTING: New insights into plasticity of human memory B cells from allergen immunotherapy
Professor Di Yu is the Director of Ian Frazer Centre of Children's Immunotherapy Research and Head of Systems and Translational Immunology Laboratory (STIL) at the University of Queensland. Before joining UQ, he was a faculty member at Monash University and Australian National University.
Professor Yu investigates T cell functional subsets in human health and disease, and innovates new strategies to monitor personal immune status and control immune pathways to treat autoimmune diseases, infection, and cancer. He has received several major awards from Australian Academy of Science, Australia Academy of Health and Medical Sciences, the Australia and New Zealand Society for Immunology and is an elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences (FAHMS).
Prof Di Yu
Frazer Institute - The University of Queensland
PRESENTING: Targeting IL-21 to safeguard the quality of adaptive immunity
Prof. Paul Hertzog/Dr Nicole Campbell
Hudson Institute of Medical Research