Dr Jamie Kuzich receives prestigious international award
02 September 2024
Dr Jamie Kuzich has received the American Society of Hematology (ASH) 2024 Global Research Award to help further his promising research career.
He is just one of 11 talented early-career investigators from around the world selected for this honor.
Dr Kuzich, a clinical haematologist completing the final year of his doctoral studies in Professor Mark Dawson’s Lab, explained that the two-year funding will allow him to further explore his project into improving chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy.
“CAR-T cell therapy has revolutionised the treatment of many blood cancers, however approximately half of treated patients are not cured by these treatments,” he said.
“Patients with certain leukaemias and lymphomas often have an excellent response to CAR-T cell therapy, but the cancer comes back in some patients.
“We believe this happens because of very rare leukaemia cells that continue to persist at extremely low levels during treatment which go on to develop resistance.
“But we know very little about how these rare “persister cells” survive in the face of strong immunotherapy treatment.”
Dr Kuzich’s project will use sophisticated tools to identify, trace and profile these rare individual cells.
“I aim to study how these cells adapt and change following CAR T-cell treatment, and the properties that allow them to do so,” he said.
“We can then use this data to identify how these cells can be targeted and eliminated, ultimately making CAR T-cell therapy a more effective treatment for a larger number of patients.
Professor Mark Dawson, Associate Director of Research Translation said this prestigious award will provide Dr Kuzich with essential research funding to help him get to the next step in his career as a researcher.
“Dr Kuzich shows great potential as a talented early -career researcher and I look forward to seeing the results of this research project so we can improve outcomes for cancer patients,” he said.