Jake Shortt, a student whose PhD work is being supported by CRCBID, was recently awarded one of three "Leukaemia Foundation Student Prizes" for his poster entitled "PI3K/mTOR pathway dissection using novel kinase inhibitors reveals the therapeutic potential of dual PI3K/mTOR blockade and identifies mTORC1 and AKT as key targets in Myc driven lymphoma".

“My CRCBID-sponsored work incorporates pre-clinical imaging techniques, including PET and bioluminescent imaging, to look at how well novel drugs work in mouse models of leukaemia and lymphoma.  Using imaging allows us to assess straight away how these novel therapeutics affect tumour metabolism.  We can also monitor the progression or regression of disease with ongoing treatment.”

“Using in-vivo imaging means we can monitor disease progression in a non-invasive way, which is important in cancers of the blood, which tend to be located anywhere in the body.  Using these techniques will help us to better understand how patients with lymphoma are responding to new drugs when they are translated to the clinic.”

Jake’s poster award was given at the New Directions in Leukaemia Research conference in March, which is held on a biennial basis on the Sunshine Coast and is hosted by the Leukaemia Foundation of Australia (for more information click on www.ndlrconference.com/).  Poster prize winners were selected following independent review of short-listed abstracts by the members of the NDLR scientific committee.

Jake Shortt’s research is being conducted at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne.   image courtesy CRCBID