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Senior Research Fellow, Tumour Immunology Research Group

BSc (Hons): NUI Maynooth
PhD: NUI Maynooth

Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship: Targeting T cell trafficking as a novel means to control obesity-associated chronic inflammation.

Research Interests: Cancer, liver disease, chemokines, immunotherapeutics, T cells, NK cells, inflammation, obesity.

Obesity is a serious global health problem affecting 500 million adults and over 40 million children worldwide. It is now estimated to be directly responsible for up to 20% of cancer deaths and has the strongest association with oesophageal adenocarcinoma (OAC), of all malignancies. OAC has the fastest growing incidence of all cancers in Ireland and the increasing prevalence of obesity is thought to be one of the main contributing factors for this. Furthermore, obesity is also responsible for increased prevalence of non alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) which results from altered lipid content and excessive inflammation in the liver. New therapies are urgently required to improve patient survivorship in OAC and to treat and prevent the clinical manifestions of excessive fat in the liver, which are observed in as many as 76% of obese individuals.

The Irish Research Council-funded fellowship is focussed on elucidating the potential of novel chemokine receptor antagonists as an immunotherapeutic target for OAC through which tumour-specific T cell responses can be redirected away from the adipose tissue and liver and toward the tumour. The overall aims of our immunological studies are to improve patient prognosis and survivorship for OAC and alleviate the detrimental complications of obesity in the liver.