Meet our Sarcoma Research Grant Recipients for 2024!

We’re delighted to announce the Sarcoma Research Grant recipients for 2024. These grants directly fund impactful research costs to improve early detection and therapy for sarcoma, supporting the best-emerging sarcoma research in Australia and New Zealand.

Congratulations to this year’s recipients:

Dr Rosemary Habib (Crown Princess Mary Cancer Centre and Westmead Institute for Medical Research)

Dr Habib has received funding from ANZSA to fund her project, The antigenic profiling of Liposarcoma and Leiomyosarcoma for the development of CAR-T cell therapies.

Dr. Habib is a medical oncologist at Blacktown Hospital, serving as the medical oncology lead for head and neck cancers and sarcoma at Westmead and Blacktown Hospitals. She leads both industry-led and investigator-initiated clinical trials, advancing translational research in the field with cutting-edge technologies. Currently a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney, her thesis focuses on "The proteomic, immune, and antigenic profiling of high-risk colorectal cancer for the design of chimeric antigen receptor therapy."

Leiomyosarcoma (LMS) and liposarcoma (LPS) are aggressive soft tissue sarcomas with a 50% risk of relapse after treatments and have 5-year survival of less than 10% for advanced stage disease.

Dr Habib’s proposed project will determine the expression of EPHA2 in LMS and LPS in order to test the EPHA2 CAR T-cells in these aggressive and hard-to treat sub-groups of sarcoma. This project will be a significant contribution to translating novel cell therapies for LMS and LPS to improve treatment outcomes.

Dr Joseph Yunis (University of Queensland)

 Dr. Yunis has received funding from ANZSA to fund his project, Evaluating vaccine efficacy in a preclinical humanised mouse model for paediatric sarcoma.

Dr. Yunis is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Queensland Frazer Institute (UQFI) and the lead researcher in developing an mRNA vaccine for children with brain cancer and sarcoma at the Ian Frazer Centre for Children’s Immunotherapy Research.

Current efforts in sarcoma vaccine development are hindered by the lack of suitable models and ineffective vaccine targets identified through genomic analysis. Recent advances in mRNA vaccine technology show promise in adult pancreatic cancer, but only 50% response rates and limited neoantigen targeting highlight the need for improved vaccine design strategies. To improve vaccine induced immune response, better vaccine design strategies are required. This project will allow better presentation of multiple candidate neoantigen targets by exploiting the normal cellular processes that antigen presenting cells to process, and present antigen to T cells. If successful, this sarcoma specific humanised mouse model and the revised strategy in vaccine design for multiple neoantigen targets will provide broader adaptation to research with potential to target our childhood cancers.

Professor Gelareh Farshid (SA Pathology, Royal Adelaide Hospital)

Professor Farshid has received funding from ANZSA to fund her project, Prospective Cohort Study of Percutaneous Needle Biopsy, Morphologic and Molecular Evaluation of Uterine Tumours with Imaging Features of Concern for Sarcoma. (GYNSarc).

She serves as a senior consultant pathologist at SA Pathology, a position she has held since 1997. Her main areas of interest are in breast pathology, soft tissue and bone pathology, public health and clinical governance. Gelareh has extensive multidisciplinary leadership experience, representing Australia and NZ on the executive Board of the International Academy of Pathology. As well as being current member of ANZSA Scientific Advisory Committee.

Until now, women with a suspicious mass in their uterus (womb) would undergo a hysterectomy, a surgery to remove the uterus and determine if the mass is cancerous or not. Core biopsies, on the other hand, use medical imaging to accurately target and sample the mass with a needle, under local anaesthesia. These procedures are quick, well tolerated by patients and have been safely and accurately used for decades to sample many types of tumours in the body.

Doctors had assumed that core biopsies could not be used to sample tumours of the uterus, but recently a French group has reported this technique was safe and accurate. This approach could potentially improve women’s care in Australia, with proposed trial of core biopsies for diagnosing tumours in the uterus.