Professor Kristen Radford is a Principal Research Fellow at Mater Research and leads the Cancer Immunotherapies Research Group with a team of three postdocs, a research assistant and four students. Kristen was of a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Career Development Fellowship (level 2 funding) and is the author of over 55 scientific publications. She has received more than $7 million in competitive funding, $3.5 million of that as the principal investigator and has one patent.
Kristen’s lab is currently focused on understanding human dendritic cell (DC) biology and translating findings into health benefits. These rare white leukocytes are crucial for generating immune responses to eradicate cancer and many pathogens but are poorly understood in humans. Kristen and her team have developed novel research tools, including humanised mice models, which are highly sought after in the biomedical world.
A major highlight of Kristen and her team’s work is the first description of the rare human CD141+ DC subset, which is now considered crucial for tumour and viral immune responses and are attractive targets for vaccine development.
Kristen developed and validated a novel vaccine for cancer between 2002-2005 that was directly translated into a first-in-man Phase I clinical trial of a cellular therapy for metastatic prostate cancer, which was conducted at Mater from 2005-2015. Kristen played a major role in the design and immune monitoring of the trial, demonstrating her passion for translation of basic research to clinical implementation.
Kristen is heavily involved in national and international peer review, serves on Editorial Boards for two international journals and is currently the chair of the Australian Society for Immunology (ASI) 2017 Annual Scientific Meeting. Kristen has served as the Queensland Councillor for the ASI and has been involved in many Institutional committees including the Translational Research Institute (TRI) Leadership Caucus, TRI Flow Core, Mater Gender Equity Working Group and nine student thesis committees. Kristen also actively contributes to the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) as part of their Postdoctoral Reference Group (2012-2014) and their Research Translation Faculty (2012 to current).
“I undertook a career in medical research because I am passionate about understanding how our immune response recognises and fights cancer and dedicated to translating basic science knowledge to improving outcomes for cancer patients.”