Carol Leung

Research interests

I am a DPhil supervisor and a senior scientist in the field of tumour immunology. I am also a member of Congregation. Our lab is interested in developing novel immunotherapies against cancer. A major breakthrough in cancer immunotherapy is the clinical success of immune checkpoint inhibitors (CPI) in treating advanced cancer. However, only a subset of patients benefit from the treatment mainly due to the lack of pre-existing anti-tumour T cell responses. Cancer vaccines can induce anti-tumour immune responses to fight cancer. Our main project is to develop the next generation cancer vaccine that can induce robust cytotoxic T cell responses, and to combine the vaccines with CPI for cancer treatment. We are also interested in studying other treatments and the tumour microenvironment that can influence the therapeutic responses and resistance, in order to develop combination therapies to treat cancer.    

Background

I did my PhD at the University of Birmingham (UK) where I studied the MHC class II processing and presentation of the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) Nuclear Antigen 1 (EBNA1). Then I moved to the University of Zurich to work on vaccine development against EBV and HIV before returning back to the UK. I am especially interested in T cell immunity and tumour immunotherapy.

Being a tutor of the UNIQ summer school programme, I give lectures on immunotherapy. Also, I lectured at a Scientists in Schools Symposium organised by the Oxford International Biomedical Centre.