- About
- Strategic Plan
- Structure
- Governance
- Scientific divisions
- ACRF Chemical Biology
- ACRF Stem Cells and Cancer
- Bioinformatics
- Cancer and Haematology
- Cell Signalling and Cell Death
- Development and Cancer
- Immunology
- Infection and Immunity
- Inflammation
- Molecular Genetics of Cancer
- Molecular Immunology
- Molecular Medicine
- Population Health and Immunity
- Structural Biology
- Systems Biology and Personalised Medicine
- Laboratory operations
- Funding
- Annual reports
- Human research ethics
- Scientific integrity
- Institute life
- Career opportunities
- Business Development
- Partnering opportunities
- Opportunities in platform technologies
- A complete cure for HBV
- A stable efficacious Toxoplasma vaccine
- Activating SMCHD1 to treat FSHD
- Fut8 Sugar coating immuno oncology
- Intercepting inflammation with RIPK2 inhibitors
- Novel checkpoints NK cells emerge as key players in IO
- Precision epigenetics silencing SMCHD1 to treat Prader Willi Syndrome
- Rethinking CD52 a therapy for autoimmune disease
- Targeting plasmacytoid dendritic cells for systemic lupus erythematosus
- Treating Epstein-Barr virus associated malignancies
- Royalties distribution
- Start-up companies
- Partnering opportunities
- Collaborators
- Publications repository
- Awards
- Discoveries
- Centenary 2015
- History
- Contact us
- Research
- Diseases
- Research fields
- Bioinformatics
- Cancer biology
- Cell death
- Cell signalling
- Clinical translation
- Computational biology
- Drug discovery
- Epigenetics
- Flow cytometry
- Genomics
- Haematology
- Imaging
- Immunology
- Infection
- Inflammation
- Medicinal chemistry
- Personalised medicine
- Proteomics
- Stem cells
- Structural biology
- Systems biology
- Vaccine development
- People
- Anne-Laure Puaux
- Associate Professor Aaron Jex
- Associate Professor Alyssa Barry
- Associate Professor Andrew Webb
- Associate Professor Anne Voss
- Associate Professor Chris Tonkin
- Associate Professor Daniel Gray
- Associate Professor Edwin Hawkins
- Associate Professor Grant Dewson
- Associate Professor Isabelle Lucet
- Associate Professor James Murphy
- Associate Professor Jeanne Tie
- Associate Professor Jeff Babon
- Associate Professor Joan Heath
- Associate Professor Justin Boddey
- Associate Professor Marco Herold Marco Herold
- Associate Professor Marnie Blewitt
- Associate Professor Matthew Ritchie
- Associate Professor Mike Lawrence
- Associate Professor Nicholas Huntington
- Associate Professor Oliver Sieber
- Associate Professor Rachel Wong
- Associate Professor Sandra Nicholson
- Associate Professor Seth Masters
- Associate Professor Sumitra Ananda
- Associate Professor Tim Thomas
- Associate Professor Wai-Hong Tham
- Associate Professor Wei Shi
- Catherine Parker
- Dr Anna Coussens
- Dr Ashley Ng
- Dr Ben Tran
- Dr Bob Anderson
- Dr Brad Sleebs
- Dr David Komander
- Dr Diana Hansen
- Dr Drew Berry
- Dr Emma Josefsson
- Dr Ethan Goddard-Borger
- Dr Gary Pitt
- Dr Gwo Yaw Ho
- Dr Hui-Li Wong
- Dr Hélène Jousset Sabroux
- Dr Ian Majewski
- Dr Ian Street
- Dr Jacqui Gulbis
- Dr James Vince
- Dr Jason Tye-Din
- Dr Joanna Groom
- Dr John Wentworth
- Dr Julie Mercer
- Dr Kate Sutherland
- Dr Kelly Rogers
- Dr Ken Pang
- Dr Leanne Robinson
- Dr Leigh Coultas
- Dr Lucy Gately
- Dr Margaret Lee
- Dr Marie-Liesse Asselin-Labat
- Dr Mary Ann Anderson
- Dr Maryam Rashidi
- Dr Matthew Call
- Dr Melissa Call
- Dr Melissa Davis
- Dr Michael Low
- Dr Misty Jenkins
- Dr Peter Czabotar
- Dr Philippe Bouillet
- Dr Priscilla Auyeung
- Dr Rhys Allan
- Dr Ruth Kluck
- Dr Samar Ojaimi
- Dr Samir Taoudi
- Dr Sant-Rayn Pasricha
- Dr Shalin Naik
- Dr Sheau Wen Lok
- Dr Simon Chatfield
- Dr Stephen Wilcox
- Dr Tracy Putoczki
- Guillaume Lessene
- Helene Martin
- Keely Bumsted O'Brien
- Mr Joel Chibert
- Mr Simon Monard
- Mr Stan Balbata
- Mr Steve Droste
- Ms Carolyn MacDonald
- Ms Samantha Ludolf
- Ms Wendy Hertan
- Professor Alan Cowman
- Professor Andreas Strasser
- Professor Andrew Lew
- Professor Andrew Roberts
- Professor Clare Scott
- Professor David Huang
- Professor David Vaux
- Professor Doug Hilton
- Professor Gabrielle Belz
- Professor Geoff Lindeman
- Professor Gordon Smyth
- Professor Ian Wicks
- Professor Ivo Mueller
- Professor Jane Visvader
- Professor Jerry Adams
- Professor John Silke
- Professor Ken Shortman
- Professor Leonard C Harrison
- Professor Li Wu
- Professor Lynn Corcoran
- Professor Marc Pellegrini
- Professor Melanie Bahlo
- Professor Nicos Nicola
- Professor Peter Colman
- Professor Peter Gibbs
- Professor Phil Hodgkin
- Professor Stephen Nutt
- Professor Suzanne Cory
- Professor Terry Speed
- Professor Tony Burgess
- Professor Tony Papenfuss
- Professor Warren Alexander
- Education
- PhD
- Honours
- Masters
- Undergraduate
- Student research projects
- 3D and 4D imaging of thymic T cell differentiation
- Activating https://www.wehi.edu.au/node/add/individual-student-research-page#Parkin to treat Parkinson’s disease
- Activation, regulation, and biological roles of E3 ubiquitin ligases
- Bioinformatics methods for detecting and making sense of somatic genomic rearrangements
- Characterising regulatory T cells in coeliac disease
- Computational melanoma genomics
- Deep profiling of blood cancers during targeted therapy
- Defining the role of necroptosis in platelet production and function
- Determining the migration signals leading to protective immune responses
- Developing mucolytics to treat chronic respiratory diseases
- Developing new tools to visualise necroptotic cell death
- Development of live-cell, automated microscopy techniques for studying malaria
- Development of tools to inform malaria vaccine design
- Discovering new genetic causes of primary antibody deficiencies
- Discovery of novel drug combinations for the treatment of bowel cancer
- Dissecting the induction and integration of T cell migration cues
- Drug targets and compounds that block growth of malaria parasites
- Effects of nutrition on immunity and infection in Asia and Africa
- Eosinophil and neutrophil heterogeneity
- Eosinophil maturation
- Epigenetic regulation of systemic iron homeostasis
- Functional differences between young and old platelets
- Generation of cytokine antagonists
- Genetic dissection of mechanisms of Plasmodium invasion
- Genomic characterisation of epigenetic regulators involved in X inactivation
- High resolution 3-dimensional imaging to characterise metastatic cancers
- High-resolution imaging of host cell invasion by the malaria parasite
- Home renovations: understanding how Toxoplasma redecorates its host cell
- How the epigenetic regulator SMCHD1 works and how to target it to treat disease
- Human monoclonal antibodies against malaria infection
- Identification of malaria parasite entry receptors
- Identification of new therapeutic opportunities for pancreatic cancer
- Identifying disease-causing haplotypes with hidden Markov models
- Interleukin-11 in gastrointestinal bacterial infections
- Investigating mechanisms of cell death and survival using zebrafish
- Investigating new paths to selective modulation of potassium channels
- Let me in! How Toxoplasma invades human cells
- Long-read sequencing for transcriptome and epigenome analysis
- Macro-evolution in cancer
- Mapping DNA repair networks in cancer
- Mapping how multiple malaria episodes are related
- Modelling gene regulatory systems
- Modulation of immune responses by immunosuppressive chemokines
- Molecular basis for inherited Parkinson’s disease mechanism of PINK1
- Mucus at the molecular level
- Novel cell death and inflammatory modulators in lupus
- Plasmodium vivax host-parasite interactions: impact on immunity
- Predicting drug response in cancer
- Programming T cells to defend against infections
- Reconstructing the immune response: from molecules to cells to systems
- Regulation of cytokine signalling
- Screening for regulators of jumping genes
- Target identification of potent antimalarial agents
- Targeting the immune system in cancer
- The role of interleukin-11 in acute myeloid leukaemia
- Transmembrane control of type I cytokine receptor activation
- Uncovering the roles of long non-coding RNAs in human bowel cancer
- Understanding retinal eye diseases with retinal transcriptomic data analysis
- Understanding the role of stromal cells in pancreatic cancer growth
- Unravelling the tumour suppressor network in models of lung cancer
- Utilising pre-clinical models to discover novel therapies for tuberculosis
- Zombieland: evolution of a dead enzyme that kills cells by necroptosis
- School resources
- Frequently asked questions
- Student profiles
- Abebe Fola
- Casey Ah-Cann
- Catia Pierotti
- Charlotte Slade
- Daniel Cameron
- Emma Nolan
- Jason Brouwer
- Joy Liu
- Lucille Rankin
- Rebecca Delconte
- Roberto Bonelli
- Rune Larsen
- Sarah Garner
- Simona Seizova
- Michael Low
- Sofonias Tessema
- Santini Subramaniam
- Miles Horton
- Alexandra Gurzau
- Tamara Marcus
- Nicholas Chandler
- Student achievements
- Student association
- News
- Donate
- Online donation
- Ways to support
- Support outcomes
- Supporter stories
- Rotarians against breast cancer
- A partnership to improve treatments for cancer patients
- 20 years of cancer research support from the Helpman family
- A generous gift from a cancer survivor
- A gift to support excellence in Australian medical research
- An enduring friendship
- Anonymous donor helps bridge the 'valley of death'
- Renewed support for HIV eradication project
- Searching for solutions to muscular dystrophy
- Supporting research into better treatments for colon cancer
- Taking a single cell focus with the DROP-seq
- WEHI.TV
Cancer killing clue could lead to safer and more powerful immunotherapies
13 February 2018
at Peter Mac could lead to safer immunotherapies for
solid cancers.
New research could help to safely adapt a new immunotherapy – currently only effective in blood cancers – for the treatment of solid cancers, such as notoriously hard-to-treat brain tumours.
The study, led by Dr Misty Jenkins from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, explains the crucial mechanisms by which CAR-T cell therapy is able to rapidly target and kill cancer cells, and why it may cause serious side effects.
CAR-T cell therapy is an innovative form of immunotherapy that uses synthetically engineered T cells to redirect the patient’s own immune system to fight their cancer. Approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2017, it has been successfully used to treat blood cancers such as childhood leukaemia and some lymphomas.
Unfortunately, CAR-T cell therapy has had mixed results in solid cancers, often causing significant side effects such as ‘cytokine storms’ – a potentially fatal inflammatory response that can lead to organ failure in some patients.
Dr Jenkins led the study, working with collaborators Mr Alex Davenport, Associate Professor Phillip Darcy and Associate Professor Paul Neeson from the Peter Mac. It was published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Dr Jenkins said the new research revealed for the first time how CAR-T cells interacted with cancer cells.
“We found that CAR-T cell receptors have the ability to rapidly identify and bind to tumour cells that would otherwise remain undetected in the immune system, and promptly kill them.
“We have previously shown a correlation between cytokine production and the length of time the immune cells were latched onto the cancer cells. The longer the cells were in contact, the more cytokines were produced, causing ever increasing degrees of damage from inflammation,” she said.
Dr Jenkins said a deep understanding of the biological factors contributing to the success and side effects of CAR-T cells would help to inform a better design and safer delivery methods for the personalised therapy.
“Our research is teaching us how to make CAR-T cells even more efficient, and without the toxic side effects, so that we can safely extend the therapy to cover a broader range of cancers,” she said.
Dr Jenkins said her research focused on how CAR-T cell therapy could successfully be used to treat brain cancer. Brain cancer has some of the poorest survival rates of any cancer in the world and desperately requires new treatment approaches.
“The brain is an incredibly delicate and challenging environment to work within,” Dr Jenkins said.
“Brain tumours are often resistant to traditional treatments, such as chemotherapy; and surgically removing tumours can come with a lot of collateral damage.
“Finding an optimum design for CAR-T cell therapy where we can kill tumour cells with limited invasion, inflammation and side effects could significantly improve the treatment of brain cancer.
“Answering fundamental biological questions about how immune cells and cancer cells function and interact, as we have done in this study, is invaluable in the quest to find formidable treatments for fatal cancers,” she said.
In 2017 Dr Jenkins received a Carrie’s Beanies 4 Brain Cancer Foundation grant and a Financial Market’s Foundation for Children Grant to continue her work to develop CAR-T cell therapies and other forms of immunotherapy for treating children with brain cancer.
The PNAS study was funded by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, the Fight Cancer Foundation and the Victorian Government.
Media enquiries
M: 0475 751 811
E: communityrelations@wehi.edu.au
Super Content:
Dr Ruth Mitchell's research into better treatments for brain cancer has been boosted by a grant from the Brain Foundation.