Ovarian cancer researcher Dr Lydia Lynch receives Irish Cancer Society grant
The Irish Cancer Society is delighted to announce that Dr Lydia Lynch is the recipient of the 2020 Immuno-oncology Award.
The Irish Cancer Society is delighted to announce that Dr Lydia Lynch is the recipient of the 2020 Immuno-oncology Award. Dr Lynch will work with Professor Donal Brennan, UCD Professor of Gynaecological Oncology and Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecological Oncologist, to undertake important research focused on the role of the immune system in ovarian cancer.
Ovarian cancer is one of the most challenging cancers because patients usually don’t have any symptoms until the cancer has spread to other organs.
New therapies targeting the patients’ own immune system to seek and kill the tumor cells is having unprecedented success in cancers that have provided new hope for patients with difficult-to-cure cancer. However, so far the current therapies have not worked well in ovarian cancer.
Dr Lynch and Prof Brennan propose that harnessing the immune system will provide the most promise to overcome ovarian cancer, and that current strategies are not targeted to the most relevant immune pathways at play in ovarian cancer.
In order for immunotherapy to work, it has to recognise and eliminate the original tumor site, the ovary, but also all the sites where the tumour has spread. Very little is known about how the immune system recognises these sites and if they express the molecules that the current drugs target.
Part of this project will propose new targets and immune cells that are more specific for eliminating metastatic tumour sites, which may provide better clinical outcome for patients with ovarian cancer.
About the researchers:
Dr Lydia Lynch
Dr Lynch received her BSc degree in Cell Biology and Genetics and her PhD in Immunology from University College Dublin. Following that she received a Newman Fellowship for her early post-doctoral studies with Prof Donal O’Shea in St. Vincent’s University Hospital, where they established the Immunology and Obesity Lab.
Lydia then received the UNESCO-L’Oreal International Women In Science Fellowship, and an International Marie Curie Fellowship where she moved to Harvard Medical School to study innate T cells in the labs of Prof Michael Brenner and Prof Ulrich von Andrian in Harvard.
In 2013, she became a junior faculty member at Brigham and Womens Hospital and Harvard Medical School and started her independent lab in both locations in 2014. Her lab has also discovered a critical role for IL-17 in the normal functions of fat, in particular in keeping us warm.
Currently, she is the Director of the Metabolic Core in Harvard and Trinity College Dublin and has recently published on immuno-oncology in lots of high impact journals such as in Nature and Nature Immunology.
Notably, Dr Lynch was a recipient of an American Diabetes Association Junior Faculty Award, a Cancer Research Institute Award, and an ERC grant to immunometabolism in obesity and cancer. She has since received the SFI President of Ireland Future Research Leader Award.
Lydia's is the first female portrait to hang on the walls of the Royal Irish Academy in 230 years, as part of the Women on Walls.
Professor Donal Brennan
Professor Brennan is a Clinician Scientist whose main research interests are in biomarker development, tumour inflammation and obesity-related carcinogenesis.
He has received several awards for his research including the title of European Young Researcher of the Year in 2010.
He has authored over 90 peer-reviewed publications and has been named on six international patent applications.
He was appointed as UCD Professor of Gynaecological Oncology and Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecological Oncologist at the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital, the National Maternity Hospital and St Vincent's University Hospital in May 2016 and practices at the Mater Private Hospital.
He is the academic lead of the Ireland East Gynecological Oncology Group.
Notably earlier this year, the Irish Cancer Society awarded Prof Brennan funding to establish the ‘Life After Cancer Clinic’, one of two pilot Womens survivorship clinics that are currently being established in Dublin and Cork.
For more information
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