Jubair Ali
DPhil Student
research interests
Cancer immunotherapy involves using what we know about the immune system to treat cancer. Despite showing the ability to improve prognosis, there is huge variability in the patient responses to immunotherapies. This highlights a need to better understand the molecular basis for this variation in patient responses. My project builds upon the LUD2015-005 trial which aimed to investigate the heterogeneity in patient responses to immunotherapy in oesophageal cancer, which has a five-year survival rate of <15%. Interestingly, patients that had clinical benefit in this trial had increased number of autoantibodies. Recently, there has been a greater emphasis placed on tumour-associated B cells, and that increased autoimmunity is seen to be associated with clinical benefit in patients treated with immunotherapy. My research will therefore be testing if this observed increased autoantibody production, common in autoimmune diseases, is because of an increased immune response, or if they are produced by tumour-associated B cells which could promote anti-cancer immune responses. This work will have wider implications in better improving treatment of gastrointestinal cancers, as well as better informing responses to and thereby the usage of immunotherapy.
background
Before arriving at Ludwig, I obtained both my BSc in Biological Sciences and MSc in Immunology from Imperial College London. My BSc thesis project, in the lab of Professor Daniel Davis, involved assessing the effectivity of stimulating antibodies in driving the activation of key anti-cancer immune cells known as natural killer (NK) cells. During my Masters project, under the tutelage of Dr Régis Joulia, I focused on the role played by immune cells in the allergic responses within the context of asthma. My prior experiences have contributed to my ever-growing interest in immunology and its relationship with different disease states such as cancer. I am particularly excited by how we can leverage key insights of cancer immunology into improving cancer treatments.