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About

Associate Professor Marie-Liesse Asselin-Labat PharmD, PhD, Viertel Senior Medical Research Fellow, is Joint-Head of the Personalised Oncology division. She completed her PhD at the University Paris XI in 2004 and pursued post-doctoral work at WEHI before starting her independent research program in 2011.

Her lab focuses on studying the interactions between the immune micro-environment and tumour cells in lung cancer. Using spatial multi-omics approaches, she aims to identify targetable pathways to increase antitumour immunity in non-small lung cancer. Her team has shown that the immune environment in which a tumour arises is an important driver of immune evasion mechanisms (Cancer Cell 2023).

Drawing on her expertise in lung cancer biology, the analysis of clinical samples, immune evasion, the spatial analysis of the tumour microenvironment and functional screens, her research aims to increase our understanding of the evolutionary interactions driving immune evasion in lung cancer, and exploit these interactions as therapeutic targets.

Publications

Selected publications from Prof Marie-Liesse Labat

Weeden, C. E., Gayevskiy, V., Marceaux, C., …, Mackay L., Speed, T. P., Gray, D. H*., ASSELIN-LABAT ML*.
(2023) Early immune pressure imposed by tissue resident memory T cells sculpts tumour evolution in non-small cell lung cancer.
Available at http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4187262 or biorxiv: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.04.20.440373
Cancer Cell in Press

Pennycuick A, Teixeira VH, AbdulJabbar K, Raza SEA, Lund T, Akarca AU, Rosenthal R, Kalinke L, Chandrasekharan DP, Pipinikas CP, Lee-Six H, Hynds RE, Gowers KHC, Henry JY, Millar FR, Hagos YB, Denais C, Falzon M, Moore DA, Antoniou S, Durrenberger PF, Furness AJ, Carroll B, Marceaux C, Asselin-Labat ML, Larson W, Betts C, Coussens LM, Thakrar RM, George J, Swanton C, Thirlwell C, Campbell PJ, Marafioti T, Yuan Y, Quezada SA, McGranahan N, Janes SM. Immune Surveillance in Clinical Regression of Preinvasive Squamous Cell Lung Cancer. Cancer Discov. 2020 Oct;10(10):1489-1499. PMID: 32690541

Leong TL, Gayevskiy V, Steinfort DP, De Massy, MR, Gonzalez-Rajal, A, Marini KD, Stone E, Chin V, Havryk A, Plit M, Irving LB, Jennings BR, McCloy RA, Jayesekara WSN, Alamgeer M, Bolell V, Field A, Russell PA, Kumar B, Gough DJ, Szczepny A, Ganju V, Rossello FJ, Cian E, Pappenfuss AT, Asselin-Labat ML*, Cowley MJ*, Watkins DN*. Deep multi-region whole-genome sequencing reveals heterogeneity and gene-by-environment interactions in treatment-naive metastatic lung cancer. 2019 Oncogene, March 01; 38(10):1661-1675. PMID: 30348992

Iglesias-Bartolome R, Abusleme L, Molinolo AA, Uchiyama A, Brooks SR, Callejas-Valera JL, Moutsopoulos N, Edwards D, Asselin-Labat ML, Onaitis M, Doci C, Gutkind JS, Morasso M. Unique transcriptional signature primes oral mucosa for rapid wound healing in humans. Science Transl Med, 2018 Jul 25;10(451) PMID: 30045979

Weeden CE, Ah-Cann C, Holik AZ, Pasquet J, Garnier JM, Merino D, Lessene G, Asselin-Labat ML. Dual inhibition of BCL-XL and MCL-1 is required to induce tumour regression in lung squamous cell carcinomas sensitive to FGFR inhibition. Oncogene, 2018 Aug ;37(32) :4475-4488 PMID: 29743589

Weeden CE, Holik AZ, Young RJ, Ma SB, Garnier JM, Fox SB, Antippa P, Irving LB, Steinfort DP, Wright GM, Russell PA, Ritchie ME, Burns CJ, Solomon B, Asselin-Labat ML. Cisplatin increases sensitivity to FGFR inhibition in patient-derived xenograft models of lung squamous cell carcinoma. Mol Cancer Ther. 2017 Aug; 16(8):1610-1622. PMID: 28611104

Weeden CE, Chen Y, Ma SB, Hu Y, Ramm G, Sutherland KD, Smyth GK, Asselin-Labat ML. Lung Basal Stem Cells Rapidly Repair DNA Damage Using the Error-Prone Nonhomologous End-Joining Pathway. PLoS Biol 2017 Jan 26 15(1):e2000731. PMID: 28125611

Holik AZ, Filby CE, Pasquet J, Viitaniemi K, Ciciulla J, Sutherland KD and Asselin-Labat ML. The LIM-domain only protein 4 contributes to lung epithelial cell proliferation but is not essential for tumor progression. Respir Res. 2015 Jun 7; 16:67. PMID: 26048572

Galvis L, Holik AZ, Short KM, Pasquet J, Lun AL, Blewitt ME, Smyth IM, Ritchie ME, Asselin-Labat ML. Repression of Igf1 expression by Ezh2 prevents basal cell differentiation in the developing lung. Development, 2015 Apr 15;142(8):1458-69. PMID: 25790853

Asselin-Labat ML, Vaillant F, Sheridan JM, Pal B, Wu D, Simpson ER, Yasuda H, Smyth GK, Martin TJ, Lindeman GJ, Visvader JE. Control of mammary stem cell function by steroid hormone signalling. Nature. 2010 Jun 10;465(7299):798-802. PMID: 20383121

Asselin-Labat ML, Sutherland KD, Barker H, Thomas R, Shackleton M, Forrest NC, Hartley L, Robb L, Grosveld FG, van der Wees J, Lindeman GJ, Visvader JE. Gata-3 is an essential regulator of mammary-gland morphogenesis and luminal-cell differentiation. Nat Cell Biol. 2007 Feb;9(2):201-9. PMID: 17187062

Lab research projects

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