Samuel Waanders-Cottingham

I am a DPhil student in Audrey Gerard’s lab, studying immune escape in the context of tumours deficient in IFN-gamma signalling. I will be investigating mechanisms of this escape and how to modulate/ exploit these immune adaptations with different immunotherapies.  I am motivated to understand the tumour-immune interplay and how we can take advantage of this to develop new therapeutic regimes. 

Prior to beginning my DPhil, I graduated from Newcastle University in MRes Cancer, where I worked in the lab of Professor Helen Reeves to investigate immune aggregates in hepatocellular carcinoma and their associations with patient outcomes and clinicopathological characteristics. Subsequently, I worked in Target Identification and Validation at Immunocore for a number of years, contributing to the drug development pipeline by validating various targets across cancer types. Long-term, I would like to advance our knowledge of tumour resistance mechanisms and identify solutions to overcome this resistance for patient benefit.