Gold-Based Drugs for the Effective Treatment of Ovarian Cancer

This scholarship will fund a 3-year PhD candidature working in the Cancer, Ageing & Vaccine Laboratory (SHBS) at RMIT University. The project is a collaboration with chemists (SoS) to test gold compounds as anti-ovarian cancer therapeutics. The PhD candidate will contribute to determining the in vivo efficacy, pharmacokinetics, safety, off-target effects (peripheral and immunity) and biodistribution of lead gold-drug candidate(s) and pharmaceutical formulation development. As part of working towards a Phase I clinical trial, the gold-compounds will need to be tested for efficacy in ovarian cancer cell lines, organoids as well as immune cells from mice and humans. The lead drug candidates will be tested in a novel immunocompetent ovarian cancer animal model created by Professor Plebanski and Dr Andrew Stephens whereby fluorescent labelling of cancer cells allows for real-time study of cancer growth and treatment. Efficacy of the gold-compounds will be analysed by advanced live in-vivo imaging and immunohistochemistry.