PhD Scholarship in Ovarian Cancer and the immune system

This project aims to pinpoint new blood immune based biomarkers as ovarian cancer diagnostics and prognostics with utility in the clinic alone or combined with existing tests. These will help women be diagnosed earlier and get onto the correct treatment earlier as well, resulting in increased survival. The research focuses on epithelial ovarian cancer, one of the leading causes of cancer related death in women, with poor prognosis hampered by lack of effective screening tools and treatment resistance. The project will use world-class big-data omics analysis of blood immune cells, including RNAseq, epigenetics, multicolour flowcytometry, cell sorting, multiplex cytokine analysis, and classical immune techniques. The laboratory uses a unique ovarian cancer animal model and blood samples from multiple human clinical trials. The scholarship is co-supervised by Dr April Kartikasari, Dr Andrew Stephens (Hudson Research Institute) and Professor Clare Scott (WEHI).