Nurfarhanah Syed Sulaiman Melbourne Immunotherapy Spring Symposium 2025

Nurfarhanah Syed Sulaiman

I am a 1st year PhD student in Associate Professor Pouya Faridi's Translational Antigen Discovery laboratory at Monash University/Hudson Institute. My PhD project focuses on the investigating the radiation induced changes at a multi-omics level in the pead DMGs that till today account for the most deadliest brain tumour in children. Despite molecular advancement that have identified the epigenetic histone 3 mutations and other driver mutations, there has been no advancement in treatment options that has improved the median survival rate which is currently standing between 9-11 months post diagnosis. There is no option for surgical resection & radiation therapy is the only cornerstone treatment to provide palliative support and to manage the tumour burden. However despite radiation treatment being the main treatment for over the decades and with more than 50% of other cancer having radiation therapy as part of treatment/ clinical management the immunostimulatory effect of irradiation has been under explored. Moroever, recently there has been amounting evidence ionising radiation can upregulating the MHC antigen presentation and generating specific T-cell presenting antigens that are unique to the irradiatied cancer cells.My reseach aims to fill this research gap by addressing the ability of harnessing the potential of using radiotherapy to reactivate the anti-tumour immune response through the identification of irradiation-induced peptides. Through my research, I hope to contirbute to further developing combinatorial therapeautic approaches to aid in the survival in children with this lethal tumour.