Guest speakers Associate Professor Fiona Simpson and Benedict Lum from UQDI.
Fiona and Benedict will be presenting Going Radioactive.
Fiona Simpson’s Bio: Fiona completed her PhD on cellular trafficking with Prof. Margaret Robinson at the University of Cambridge, UK. She was then a Wellcome Trust Prize Post-doctoral fellow at The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA in the laboratory of Prof. Sandra Schmid working on trafficking and endocytosis of RTKs. Fiona then joined UQ as a Juvenile Diabetes International Fellow in the laboratory of Prof. David James working on insulin receptors and trafficking. Fiona is currently a Fellow of the Queensland Head and Neck Cancer Centre and heads a laboratory focused on the response prediction and improvement of tumour therapeutics.
The Simpson lab research program is focused directly on the translation of research findings into new cancer therapies and has generated a novel method for antibody-mediated cancer therapy and associated companion diagnostic methods which are covered by two international patent applications (2012 priority) and a third provisional patent application filed in 2015. Fiona was the Lead scientific investigator on a Phase I proof of concept study of the novel therapy in head and neck cancer (HREC/15/QPAH/48), now successfully completed and the Lead scientific Investigator on forthcoming Phase II clinical trials in advanced cancer.
Benedict Lum’s Bio: Benedict completed his honours under the supervision of A/Prof Fiona Simpson and was awarded the UQDI Honours scholarship during his honours year in 2018. He is currently a 2nd year PhD student working on immune-oncology combination therapies in diseases like melanoma, squamous cell carcinoma and rare diseases like adenoid cystic carcinoma. His research interest is in cellular trafficking of targeted therapies and how we can potentially manipulate cellular trafficking of receptors to improve targeted therapies.