Professor Alan Melcher
Professor of Translational Immunotherapy at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and Honorary Consultant Oncologist at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust
He graduated in medicine from the University of Oxford and trained in Clinical Oncology (Radiotherapy and Chemotherapy) in Cardiff, London and Leeds. Following completion of his PhD at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (now Cancer Research UK) in London, he was a post-doctoral research fellow at the Mayo Clinic, Minnesota, before returning to the UK, where in 2007 he became Professor of Clinical Oncology and Biotherapy at Leeds, before moving to London in 2016.
Professor Melcher’s laboratory and translational research is focused on oncolytic viruses, radiotherapy and immunotherapy for the treatment of cancer. He and his team are investigating how to improve the ability of oncolytic viruses to trigger immunogenic cell death in tumours. They are also working on how radiotherapy treatment of tumours impacts on the immune system and anti-tumour immunity, in patients as well as pre-clinical model systems. These studies are designed to help us develop a more scientifically-informed, rational approach to combination immunotherapy strategies for testing in patients.
Professor Awen Gallimore
Professor at the Division of Infection and Immunity, Cardiff University
Awen gained a DPhil in Professor Andrew McMichael’s laboratory in Oxford, studying the immune response to simian and human immunodeficiency viruses. With a Wellcome Trust travelling fellowship she subsequently moved to the laboratory of the Nobel laureate Professor Rolf Zinkernagel to laboratory to further study factors important for anti-viral immunity.
She then established her own laboratory with further Wellcome Trust funding in the Nuffield Department of Medicine in Oxford to look at ways of persuading the immune system to recognise cancer. Awen moved to Cardiff in 2002 and shortly afterwards gained a senior fellowship from the MRC to expand her lab. The Cardiff lab, which currently receives funding from Cancer Research UK, Cancer Research Wales, Breast Cancer Now and The Wellcome Trust takes basic research using animal models of cancer through to testing novel immunotherapies in patients with cancer.