Organoid-based precision medicine approaches for oral cancer

Oral cancer is a devastating disease with poor survival rates. Although various treatments exist, patient response rates are low. Organoid technology, the ability to grow patient tumour tissue in the laboratory, offers an opportunity for informing clinical care and discovering new treatments.

This project will develop organoid drug testing workflows for oral cancer, working in collaboration with the Royal Melbourne Hospital. Both standard and novel therapies will be investigated including immunotherapy. Organoid responses will be examined in the context of tumour genomic alterations and analysed for predictive value of patient responses in the clinic.

Our laboratory focuses on understanding the biology of human cancers, including bowel, oral and brain tumours, with the aim to develop new treatments for patients. We have a particular interest in applying organoid technology in clinical diagnostics and drug discovery.

We integrate patient cohort studies with work on pre-clinical model systems, utilising a wide range of techniques including genomics, functional and drug screening. Depending on interests and skills, students in the laboratory are encouraged and supported in learning both the techniques to generate new data, as well as the computational tools to analyse and interpret the results.

Our team is composed of passionate post-doctoral scientists, experienced research officers and PhD students with different scientific backgrounds which promotes collaboration and constructive discussions on the different projects.