Australian Rotary Health

I grew up Ashbury and attended Christian Brothers’ High School Lewisham followed by the University of Sydney. It was at university that I developed a passion for research, learning that such a career could be stimulating as well as beneficial to the community. But research is not always fun and rarely easy – we are trying to unlock some of the mysteries of disease that have eluded scientists for decades. With a single human cell containing about 60,000 different proteins, you can see how the task isn’t an easy one. However, I am pleased to be part of the effort to a reach a solution to cancer.

 

I hope to be able to continue scientific research after the completion of my PhD. Outside the lab, I enjoy fitness training, the outdoors and watching rugby league 

SUMMARY OF PROJECT:

 

My PhD project is looking at the involvement of one particular protein in the growth and spread of cancer throughout the body, called Tumor Protein D52 (or just D52). There is lots of D52 protein in cancer cells compared to normal cells – but the question is why, and how might this extra D52 be helping cancer cells grow and spread around the body? To answer this question, my experiments involve growing cells with and without D52 protein, and identifying differences between them using different techniques.

So far, my results have shown that having too much D52 allows cells to invade the type of natural barriers that exist within human tissues. I am now trying to work out how to interfere with this invasive capacity. We hope that this might be relevant to patient treatment in the future, as most cancer patients die of their disease because they have invasive tumours.