RESEARCHER PROFILE
Dr Josephine Wright
South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI)
Filmed September 2023
Dr Josephine Wright is a Senior Research Fellow in the Gut Cancer group. She has been developing a translational network of labs, hospitals and clinics to enable validation of new approaches to prevent and treat colorectal and gastric cancer. Her key focus is studying human tumour organoids to better personalise therapy in cancer.
Dr Wright is part of an international team of researchers from Adelaide and the United States that has engineered bacteria capable of detecting mutated DNA released from colorectal cancer cells, opening the door to faster disease detection.
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Targeting chemotherapy resistance in ovarian cancer patients
Dr Alex Cole, from the Centenary Institute’s Centre for Biomedical AI, is now leading the research focused on developing a new treatment to counteract a protein called follistatin (FST), known for making ovarian cancer cells resistant to chemotherapy.
By employing cutting-edge molecular biology and directed evolution techniques, the project aims to create nanobodies—small, precise molecules—that can block FST. If successful, these nanobodies could enhance the effectiveness of chemotherapy and improve ovarian cancer treatment rates.
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Novel immunotherapies in lymphoma
Dr Sean Harrop is a dual-trained haematologist having completed his clinical and laboratory haematology training at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Royal Melbourne Hospital and St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne. He is the current clinical haematology fellow (aggressive lymphoma) at Peter MacCallum and a PhD student in the Cancer Immunology Program in the Neeson Lab.
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Personalised approaches to lung therapy
Dr. Adams’ research focus is on lung cancer, which is the deadliest of all cancers worldwide. He is working towards developing personalised approaches to pinpoint a therapy that is going to be most effective for the person with that disease. Dr. Adams’ research is focusing on chemotherapy and targeted therapy, and he is trying to identify upfront which of those tumours are likely to be resistant to the therapy. He then identifies strategies that will resensitize or increase the sensitivity of the tumour to the standard of care that is targeted therapy or chemotherapy.
