Translational Antigen Discovery Laboratory
Translational Antigen Discovery laboratory research is on the identification of clinically relevant peptides present by Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA). These peptide antigens will be targets for the development of precision immunotherapies for cancer, autoimmune diseases, and infection. We are developing mass-spectrometry, immunopeptidomics, proteomics, bioinformatics, multi-omics, and immunology technologies to identify and validate HLA-bound peptide antigens that are present by tumours or antigen-presenting cells. We are collaborating with several clinicians and the pharma industry to translate our findings to the clinic.
Funding sources
We are grateful to receive funding from:
- National Health and Medical Research Council
- Isabella and Marcus foundation
- Victorian Cancer Agency
- Cancer Australia
- Australian Lions Childhood Cancer Research Foundation
- Australian Melanoma Research Foundation
Meet the team
Laboratory Head
Other staff and students
Dr Dongbin Jin - Postdoctoral research fellow
Dongbin completed his Bachelor of Science majoring in Biology and Master of Science majoring in Immunology, before doing his PhD and Postdoctoral research at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research under the supervision of Prof Jonathan Sprent.
At Garvan, Dongbin used preclinical models to develop novel vaccine technologies that can massively expand tumour killing T cells. Dongbin plan to bring these exciting findings into numerous publications and extend them into more clinically relevant settings in Translational Antigen Discovery Laboratory at Monash Medical Centre.
Find out more about Dr Dongbin Jin.
Dr Terry Lim - Postdoctoral research fellow
Dr Terry Lim graduated with a Bachelor of Biotechnology with first-class Honours (specialising in medical biotechnology) and subsequently completed a PhD at Monash University under the supervision of Professor Anthony Purcell. His PhD work involved cutting-edge proteomics and immunopeptidomics mass spectrometry techniques to understand the immunology of the human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-B27 in the development of the autoimmune disease Ankylosing Spondylitis. Dr Lim’s interests in cancer biology has led to postdoctoral research in Professor Roger Daly’s laboratory. Utilising patient centric tumour samples in the form of organoids and patient-derived xenographs (PDX), his work applied phosphoproteomics techniques as a tool to dissect the molecular changes in pancreatic, brain and breast cancer to identify novel biomarkers and therapeutic targets for personalised cancer treatments.
He is currently the clinical proteomics specialist at the Monash Proteomics and Metabolomics Facility (Clinical Proteomics Node).
Find out more about Dr Terry Lim.
Liesl Bramberger - PhD candidate
Liesl is studying a type of childhood brain cancer called Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG). She is interested in looking at ways to use her research to improve current treatment practises for the treatment of DIPG as well ultimately looking for a cure.
Dr Fatemeh Shamekhi - PhD candidate
Dr Fatemeh Shamekhi received her PhD in Nanobiotechnology in 2018. In 2021, she joined Translational Antigen Discovery-Faridi Laboratory at Monash Medical Centre, to pursue her interest in identifying HLA-bound peptide targets for the development of paediatric brain tumours precision immunotherapies. She is honoured to be known as “Kye Funch” scholar supported by Australian Communities Foundation through the Isabella and Marcus Fund to investigate Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma which is the most aggressive of all childhood cancers.
Her project is about using multi-omics technologies, particularly Genomics, Transcriptomics, and immunopeptidomics, to identify novel targets for DIPG and other childhood brain tumour immunotherapy.
Gabriel Goncalves - PhD candidate
Gabriel is currently a second-year PhD student analysing the repertoire of cell surface antigens on triple-negative breast cancer. He has a particular interest in identifying actionable immunotherapy targets via the classical and non-classical antigen presentation pathways.
Ritchlynn Aranha - PhD candidate
Ritchlynn is a second year PhD student at the Faridi Lab. His work focuses on the discovery of novel immunogenic spliced peptides in melanoma by altering the antigen presentation and processing machinery (APPM) of the cell. He will be knocking out multiple different proteins in the APPM and studying their impact on the spliced peptidome using mass spectrometry. This should further the understanding of spliced peptide presentation.
Mohammad Shahbazy - PhD Candidate
Email: mohammad.shahbazy@monash.edu | Google Scholar | LinkedIn | Twitter
Since 2019, Mohammad has been a Ph.D. candidate in the Immunoproteomics Lab (led by Prof. Anthony Purcell) and the Translational Antigen Discovery Lab (led by Dr. Pouya Faridi - from 2021) at Monash University. He is developing high-throughput mass spectrometry-based proteomics and immunopeptidomics platforms for quantitative analysis of stability profiles and post-translational modifications in peptides bound to MHC/HLA class I molecules. He is also working on bioinformatics software tools incorporating machine learning and deep learning to visualize and explore human proteomes and immunopeptidomes data in-depth.
Research Interests: Proteomics; Mass spectrometry; Immunopeptidomics; Immunotherapy; Antigen presentation; Bioinformatics; Immunoinformatics.
Mohammadreza Dorvash - PhD Candidate
mohammadreza.dorvash@monash.edu
After completing his Pharmacy Doctorate at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Iran, Reza joined Prof. Purcell’s and Dr. Faridi’s Labs as a PhD student. Reza is personally enthused with employing non-linear dynamics to understand intracellular signal transduction. His PhD project focuses on using Proteomics and Immunopeptidomics methods to investigate the effects of perturbed signalling pathways on the HLA ligandome of Pancreatic Cancer.
Yue Ding - Masters student
Develop a sensitive workflow to detect HLA peptides and MHC peptides by LC-MS/MS with the addition of supercharging agents. Adding supercharging agents in the mobile phase can increase molecule ion charge in MS and has a positive influence in protein detection. This workflow aims to detect a large number of HLA and MHC peptides in DIPG tumour tissues and enhance the ion intensity in MS.
Grace Huang - Honours student
Grace is an Honours Student completing a project at the Faridi Lab and Cain Lab. Her project involves epigenetic regulatory drugs, such as histone deacetylase inhibitors, and whether they can restore the antigen processing pathway in childhood solid tumours. The aim is to study the effect of epigenetic modifier drugs on HLA expression levels in solid tumour cells, particularly osteosarcoma cell lines.