Cancer and Host Dynamics Group

Research Overview | The team | Projects | Media | Our partners

Research Overview

Cancer Host Dynamics lab projects. Photo created using BioRender.com

The Cancer and Host Dynamics Group tackles a number of different research questions linked by the notion that nothing happens in isolation, and cancer cells are only one part of a complicated system that has failed to prevent cancer development and survival. While undoubtedly genomic errors within the cancer cells themselves are essential triggers in the pathway to cancer formation, we seek to understand how cancer cells interact with the broader environment, particularly during the selective pressures of cancer therapy. A diverse range of data now show that microenvironmental and even whole patient-level factors make distinct but measurable contributions to cancer fate. Our research aims to understand these contributions mechanistically, and leverages biospecimen-driven approaches to identify predictive biomarkers and potential new therapeutic avenues that treat the patient in order to treat the cancer.

Research of the Cancer and Host Dynamics Group explores molecular and cellular phenomena active from the very zoomed-in level of the cancer genome right through to the zoomed-out ‘whole patient’ level, reflecting the fact that cancer is not just a disease of the genome.

Student research opportunities

Meet the team

Group Leader

Research Assistant
- Ms Akram Baghani
PhD Students
- Ms Isobel Leece
- Mr Jack Edwards (with Dept of Immunology and Pathology)
- Dr Steven Nicolaides (with Dept of Gastroenterology)
MDataSci Student
- Ms Mansi Aggarwal
BMedSc(Hons) Students
- Mr Shirahn Ballah
- Mr Lawrence Lin
Alumni
- Dung (Dan) Doan – BSc(Hons) 2023

Projects

To assist prospective staff/students, projects are listed with an indication of where they fit in the clinical, wet lab (experimental), dry lab (data analysis) research spectrum. We welcome enquiries from motivated, inquisitive students, preferably with a background in cancer biology, immunology, or bioinformatics, interested in building and strengthening their capability in translational cancer research.

Cancer cells behave abnormally, but many factors that are external to cancer cells are important determinants of whether a cancer grows or not. Here, we seek to take a zoomed-out look at the cancer-extrinsic factors that influence tumour growth and survival, including host- and environmental factors like sex hormones, obesity, and the microbiome.
- mechanisms of interaction between androgen signalling, obesity hormones and cancer therapy (wet lab, dry lab)
- gut microbiota and microbiota-derived metabolite associations with response and toxicity to immunotherapy (clinical, dry lab)
- gut microbiota-directed interventions (e.g. faecal microbiota transplantation, FMT) for management of gut irAE (clinical, wet lab)
- patterns of gut microbiota evolution during systemic therapy and radiation for pancreatic cancer (clinical)
Recent publications
Cancer immunotherapy has radically changed the treatment landscape for many cancer patients, but most current immunotherapy agents cause non-specific and unpredictable immune activation against normal body tissues, leading to side-effects. For immunosuppressed populations, cancer risk is often elevated, but use of cancer immunotherapy as treatment is complex due to concurrent immunosuppressive medications and/or risk of organ rejection in transplant recipients. The cellular mechanisms underlying immune-related adverse events (irAEs) are poorly understood on a case-by-case basis, and treatment is consequently non-personalised. Here, we aim to build systems to track irAE epidemiology across our patient cohort, establish translational approaches to evaluating mechanisms of irAE for individual patients, and use this information to refine immunomodulatory treatment choices for patients experiencing irAE or with concurrent need for immunosuppressive medications.
- a platform for rolling clinical audit and care pathway improvement for immunotherapy toxicities [clinical, dry lab]
- mechanistic studies of irAE using patient-derived biospecimens and pre-clinical models [wet lab]
- comprehensive comparison of immunosuppressive medications in irAE [wet lab]
- transplant immunosuppressed populations and cancer risk/outcomes [clinical]
Recent publications
- Malignancy risk and mortality after lung transplantation: A single-institution experience over 31 years
No single factor determines whether a cancer responds to, or resists, treatment. Approaches to predicting the outcome of cancer treatment are increasingly drawing upon multiple layers of information in ever-more complex models. Here, we are building a multimodal biomarker dataset from our own comprehensively annotated clinical cohort of patients receiving cancer immunotherapy, with a focus on highly accessible liquid biomarkers that are currently under-represented in biomarker models.
- circulating immune repertoire profiling [wet lab, dry lab]
- metabolites and proteomic markers [wet lab, dry lab]
- cfRNA/miRNA [wet lab, dry lab]
Recent publications
- Design, optimisation and standardisation of a high-dimensional spectral flow cytometry workflow assessing T-cell immunophenotype in patients with melanoma
- Identification of microRNA-mRNA networks in melanoma and their association with PD-1 checkpoint blockade outcomes
Cancer behaviour is highly dynamic and when modelled as a complex system, it is often very difficult to predict the state of the system at a future time based on its current conditions. Detailed knowledge of cancer genomics has nonetheless identified key determinants of cancer behaviour, due either to ‘initiating’ cancer-intrinsic events, or ‘reactive’ cancer-extrinsic events typified by altered responses to environmental stimuli. Here, we are interested in understanding how the observed phenotypes of cancer intrinsic genomic features are modified by the surrounding microenvironment, including understanding the significance of tumour mutations on overall cancer trajectory and metastatic spread. Melanoma cells are well known to undergo a ‘phenotype shifting’ de-differentiation process analogous to the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) which is implicated in tumour progression and treatment resistance but comparatively little is known about the therapeutic potential of re-differentiation.
- real-world studies of genomic features and clinical outcomes in melanoma [dry lab, clinical]
- understanding and validating mutational associations with metastatic spread [wet lab]
- drivers of melanoma ‘re-differentiation’ [wet lab]
Recent publications

Department of Cancer Medicine

Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences

Cancer and Host Dynamics Group

Research Overview

Meet the team

Group Leader

Projects

Recent publications

Recent publications

Recent publications

Recent publications

Media

Clinical and research partners