Head, Cytokine and Cancer Signalling Group

My research utilizes novel cancer models to understand mechanisms of communication between immune cells and cancer cells to help improve immunotherapy treatments for advanced gastric and colorectal cancer patients.

After receiving my PhD in the field of Pharmaceutical Science, from the Goethe University (Frankfurt Germany), I performed my post-doctoral research at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute for Medical Research (WEHI) (2012-2014) and at the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute (from 2015).

I am currently Head of the newly formed Cytokine and Cancer Signalling Group at the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute.

I am a Victorian Cancer Agency (Mid-Career) Fellow and recipient of the AACR-Debbie’s Dream Foundation’s Gastric Cancer Research Award. My research discovered the tumour promoting role of cytokine IL33 in gastric cancer (Nat Com 2019) and I have developed new gastric cancer models, which enable testing of novel immunotherapies against gastric cancer.

My team’s research focuses on understanding the cytokine signalling that drives the crosstalk between the cancer cells and the tumour microenvironment in gastric and colorectal cancer. We continue to establish novel cancer models, including cancer organoids and employ those models to investigate the role of IL33/ST2 as well as IL6/IL11/STAT3 signalling in shaping the tumour microenvironment. We study their impact on cancer progression, metastasis formation and (immune) therapy responses.