Faith Chang has been awarded a Cancer Council Western Australia PhD Top Up Scholarship for her project, ‘Improving responses to immunotherapy with radiotherapy in mesothelioma.’

The Cancer Council WA PhD Top Up Scholarship aims “to provide support for outstanding students with an outstanding track record in academic achievement, and the potential to pursue full-time PhD studies in cancer-related research.” It awards $12 000 per year over a period of three years.

Faith is supervised by Dr Alistair Cook, Dr Scott Fisher, Dr Jonathan Chee, and Prof Martin Ebert. Her project aims to provide a more effective treatment for mesothelioma by combining radiotherapy and immunotherapy.

In addition to killing cancer cells, radiotherapy is also able to boost immune responses to cancer. Previous research had found a combination of radiotherapy and immunotherapy that cured 100% of mesothelioma tumours under the skin in mice. Although promising, there are still more questions that need to be answered before the treatment might be tested in clinical trials. Faith will attempt to expand the team’s knowledge around radio-immunotherapy by investigating how radiotherapy changes immune cells to help them destroy cancer cells; how well radio-immunotherapy treats cancer that has already spread; and whether it can be used to treat tumours surrounding the lung, which is where mesothelioma usually occurs in humans.

In Faith’s own words, “My project is around understanding how radiotherapy and immunotherapy work together to boost the function of cancer-killing immune cells (T cells) in mesothelioma. Understanding this better will bring us closer to starting a radio-immunotherapy clinical trial and expanding treatment options in this severe cancer.”

Congratulations to Faith for her fantastic achievement!

To see the recipients of Cancer Council WA’s 2023 grants, click here.