Supervisor: Dr Andrew Guirguis

Laboratory: Blood Cancer Drivers & Therapeutics Laboratory

Pre-leukaemic myeloid blood cancers remain potentially curable through stem cell transplantation. However, unlike lymphoid malignancies, immunotherapy in this context has largely been unsuccessful, and the mechanisms by which myeloid clones evade immune detection remain poorly understood. This project will employ co-culture systems and mass spectrometry to define how myeloid cells present themselves to the immune system, with the aim of uncovering strategies to enhance their immunogenicity. By ‘awakening’ immune surveillance, we aim to eliminate early-preleukaemic clones before they acquire addition mutations that drive transformation. This approach holds significant potential to improve outcomes for patients with blood cancers.