Resistance Prevention

This program will work on understanding the mechanisms underlying response and resistance to contemporary cancer therapies. It is envisaged that laboratory findings will be translated directly from bench to bedside through clinical trials.

Hormone Dependent Cancers

Plans include recruitment of a senior leader focused on breast cancer to complement Professors Sweeney and Butler’s prostate cancer expertise.

Paediatric and Neuro-oncology

The Paediatric and Neuro-oncology program will utilise the close links to the Braggs Comprehensive Cancer Centre, which is Australia’s first proton therapy centre and the first of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. It is expected to be completed in late 2023 and treating approximately 700 patients per year from 2025. The program’s research teams will also work closely with SAiGENCI affiliates such as Professor Jordan Hansford.

Computational Cancer Immunogenomics Laboratory

Group Leader - Dr Stefano Mangiola

Dr Stefano Mangiola is the head of the Computational Cancer Immunogenomics laboratory at SAiGENCI. At SAiGENCI, the lab's research is centred on elucidating the intricate interplay between cancer and the immune system through sophisticated multiomic profiling and advanced computational strategies.

Dr Mangiola and his team employ high-throughput and cutting-edge next-generation technologies, such as spatial and single-cell sequencing, coupled with metabolomics, to intricately map the immune response and trace the pathways of cancer progression and metastasis.

The lab’s focus on modelling the immune tissue and tissue biology through large-scale data modelling will be propelled by novel, highly scalable analysis pipelines and the use of machine learning techniques on demographic-scale datasets.
OncoTherapeutics and Biology Laboratory

Group Leader - Professor Christopher Sweeney

The Sweeney Research Group has a translational research focus and works to better understand the
underlying biology of prostate cancer and improve therapies for patients.

Prostate cancer is a complex disease that affects millions of men globally. Development of prostate cancer
involves corruption of the normal prostate transcriptional network, following deregulated expression or
mutation of key transcription factors. The group is interested in understanding how many of these
transcription factors affect prostate cancer development, from localised disease to castration-resistant
metastatic prostate cancer, and subsequently finding viable therapeutic approaches to benefit patients.

The research team is led by Professor Christopher Sweeney, who has devoted his clinical and academic career
to developing strategies to improve the care of patients with genitourinary malignancies with a major focus on
prostate cancer and testicular cancer