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Cancer Vaccine Laboratory
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The Cancer Vaccine Program integrates clinical and laboratory teams in order to better understand immune responses against cancer and to develop new cancer therapies based on these understandings.

Three research streams have been developed in order to achieve this:

(i) Cancer antigens- with a focus on NY-ESO-1,
(ii) Dendritic Cell (DC) biology - exploring the regulators of DC function including antigen uptake, migration, cytokine secretion, antigen cross-presentation, T cell stimulation and
(iii) Analysing immune responses that arise spontaneously and in vaccine recipients.

The program has been particularly interested in malignant melanoma as a disease for the development of these cancer vaccines. We have collected clinical data from our Phase I and Phase I/II studies, and characterised tumour antigen expression and also patient immunological profiles. Using gene arrays, we have identified molecules which are associated with different clinical outcomes in melanoma patients and we are evaluating the key molecular pathways in these human tumours. We are also assessing spontaneous and vaccine-induced immune responses against melanoma and have a particular interest in developing methods for targeting melanoma stem cells.

 

Publications

1. Robson, N.C., Phillips, D.J., Mcalpine, T., Shin, A., Svobodova, S., Toy, T., Pillay, V., Kirkpatrick, N., Zanker, D., Wilson, K., Helling, I., Wei, H., Chen, W., Cebon, J., and Maraskovsky, E., Activin-A: a novel dendritic cell-derived cytokine that potently attenuates CD40 ligand-specific cytokine and chemokine production. Blood, 111(5): p. 2733-43 2008.

2. John, T., Caballero, O.L., Svobodova, S.J., Kong, A., Chua, R., Browning, J., Fortunato, S., Deb, S., Hsu, M., Gedye, C.A., Davis, I.D., Altorki, N., Simpson, A.J., Chen, Y.T., Monk, M., and Cebon, J.S., ECSA/DPPA2 is an embryo-cancer antigen that is coexpressed with cancer-testis antigens in non-small cell lung cancer. Clin Cancer Res, 14(11): p. 3291-8 2008.

3. John, T., Black, M.A., Toro, T.T., Leader, D., Gedye, C.A., Davis, I.D., Guilford, P.J., and Cebon, J.S., Predicting clinical outcome through molecular profiling in stage III melanoma. Clin Cancer Res, 14(16): p. 5173-80 2008.

4. Davis, I.D., Skrumsager, B.K., Cebon, J., Nicholaou, T., Barlow, J.W., Moller, N.P., Skak, K., Lundsgaard, D., Frederiksen, K.S., Thygesen, P., and Mcarthur, G.A., An open-label, two-arm, phase I trial of recombinant human interleukin-21 in patients with metastatic melanoma. Clin Cancer Res, 13(12): p. 3630-6 2007.

5. Cebon, J., Gedye, C., John, T., and Davis, I.D., Immunotherapy of advanced or metastatic melanoma. Clin Adv Hematol Oncol, 5(12): p. 994-1006 2007.

6. Nicholaou, T., Ebert, L., Davis, I.D., Robson, N., Klein, O., Maraskovsky, E., Chen, W., and Cebon, J., Directions in the immune targeting of cancer: lessons learned from the cancer-testis Ag NY-ESO-1. Immunol Cell Biol, 84(3): p. 303-17 2006.


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Cancer Vaccine Lab Staff
Laboratory Head
Prof Jonathan Cebon
Email

 

Staff Directory

Jonathan Cebon - Laboratory Head
Eugene Maraskovsky - Honorary Fellow
Andreas Behren - Postdoctoral Fellow
Craig Gedye - Postdoctoral Fellow
Ashley Knights - Postdoctoral Fellow
Neil Robson - Postdoctoral Fellow
Tamara Lowen - Research Assistant
Florina Lo - Research Assistant
Tristan McAlpine - Research Assistant
Suzanne Svobodova - Research Officer
Matthew Anaka - Ph.D. Student

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Of Note

Grants

Jonathan Cebon
Harold J. Lloyd Charitable Trust 2007-2008
Hilton-Ludwig Cancer Metastasis Initiative 2007-2010
Melanoma Research Alliance Team Award 2008-2011
NH&MRC Practitioner Fellowship 2008-2012

Craig Gedye
COSA-HOTT Fellowship 2008

 
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