Guimaraes Group - Translational immunotherapy

Our projects are multidisciplinary by necessity. We combine immunology, cancer biology, cellular and molecular biology, computational biology, pharmacology and proteomics, and we use advanced models to mimic disease, validate discoveries, define mechanisms of action and build new therapeutics. The through line is consistent: understand how immune cells are regulated, then use that knowledge to intervene.

Our current programs fall into five areas.

1. Systems immunology of immune regulation

We use single-cell transcriptomics, spatial profiling, high-dimensional cytometry and computational modelling to map how immune cells are wired in health and disease. This lets us find regulatory nodes that conventional approaches miss, and to prioritise the ones worth targeting.

2. Discovery of novel immune checkpoints

We identify and characterise new inhibitory and activating receptors that control immune cell function. We then determine how they operate at a signalling level, and whether blocking or engaging them restores anti-tumour or anti-inflammatory immunity.

3. Engineered cellular therapies

We design and build chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) therapies across both T cell and NK cell platforms, and we choose the platform to suit the disease rather than the other way around. CAR T cells offer potency and persistence. CAR NK cells offer an allogeneic, off-the-shelf route with a different safety profile. Our work covers receptor design, armouring strategies to resist the suppressive tumour microenvironment, approaches to improve persistence and trafficking, and the manufacturing and scale-up challenges that limit translation. We also develop strategies to personalise these therapies to individual patients and tumours.

Through our manufacturing infrastructure we can take an engineered cell product from initial design through preclinical validation to clinical trial-enabling production.

4. Antibody discovery and rational combination immunotherapy

We generate and validate novel monoclonal antibodies against targets emerging from our discovery work, and test them alone and in combination with existing immunotherapies. The goal is combinations built on mechanism rather than trial and error.

5. Advanced preclinical and human models

We develop models that better reflect human disease, including humanised systems, patient-derived material and organotypic culture. These serve both our own mechanistic questions and the preclinical validation required to move a candidate toward the clinic.

Opportunities for students

We host Honours, MPhil, PhD and summer research students, and we welcome enquiries from students with backgrounds in immunology, biomedical science, biotechnology, bioengineering and computational biology.

Projects are available across all five research areas above and are shaped around the student's interests and strengths. Depending on the project, you will gain skills in:

• single-cell and spatial transcriptomics, and the computational analysis that goes with them
• high-dimensional flow and mass cytometry
• CRISPR-based, mRNA and lentiviral-based gene editing
• primary human immune cell culture and functional assays
• CAR construct design, viral and non-viral gene delivery, and engineering of both T and NK cell products
• antibody generation, characterisation and validation
• preclinical models of cancer and inflammatory disease

Students in our laboratory are part of a translational research environment. You will work alongside clinicians, industry partners and commercialisation teams, and you will see how a discovery becomes a therapeutic candidate. Our students present at national and international meetings and are supported to publish.

If you are interested in joining us, contact us with your CV, academic transcript and a short note on which research area interests you and why.