I’m a PhD candidate at the University of Otago, currently under the supervision of Mike Eccles and Aniruddha Chatterjee.
My research interests involve cancer biology, datascience and bioinformatics.
My main project involves investigating the role of DNA methylation in regulating an immunosupressive protein called PD-L1. Cancers commonly use PD-L1 to suppress the anti-tumour immune attack in order to indefinitely grow and metastsize. There has been remarkable treatment progress with drugs that block PD-L1 interactions by reactivating anti-tumour immunity. However a major issue is that only a fraction of patients respond. Various mechanisms that regulate PD-L1 levels has been uncovered however whether DNA methylation plays a role is yet unclear.