Postdoctoral Training Fellow - Microenvironment

About you

The successful candidate must have:

Department/Directorate Information

The Division of Radiotherapy and Imaging brings together research groups that work on how to use radiation therapy, guided by state-of-the-art imaging techniques, in the most effective way to cure cancer. Our work is based on the central idea that the best outcomes will be achieved by delivering curative radiation doses to tumours, while limiting radiation damage of neighbouring normal tissues.  Our therapy often includes adding drug treatments alongside radiation therapy as a means of killing cancer cells more effectively and, at the same time, activating anti-tumour immune responses. Preclinical work includes research that combines radiation therapy with radiation sensitisers and biological response modifiers (for example innate immune activators, immune checkpoint inhibitors) to maximise anti-tumour efficacy and give protection against tumour recurrence. Multiple translational clinical studies seek to address these themes through our collaborators in the Royal Marsden. Overall, our mission is to cure more patients with fewer immediate and long-term side effects of treatment.

The Biological Enhancement of Radiotherapy and Stromal Radiobiology Groups (led by Magnus Dillon and Anna Wilkins) aim to understand how the tumour microenvironment drives radiotherapy resistance. The groups focus on gastrointestinal and bladder cancers with an emphasis on integrating findings from preclinical models and patient samples.

The immunostimulatory effect of radiation is often restrained by suppressive cells in the tumour microenvironment.  These include certain populations of cancer-associated fibroblasts, macrophages, myeloid-derived suppressor cells and tumour-associated neutrophils.  Both fibroblast and macrophage activation and polarity can be affected by radiation, with dose-dependent effects.  The effect of dose-rate is unknown, but delivering radiation at ultra-high dose-rates (FLASH) is believed to have reduced effects on normal tissues, including immune cells.  Microbeam radiotherapy offers the opportunity to modulate different spatially-distributed populations by exposure to different radiation doses.  Using these technologies may allow the delivery of radiation which (a) preserves and (b) stimulates anti-tumour immune cells, when compared to standard treatment.