Translational drug discovery
Servier IFN-γ Drug Discovery Program
Partnering with industry to turn one of the immune system's natural brakes into a new class of cancer drug.
The immune system carries built-in brakes that tumors learn to exploit. This program, run in partnership with Servier, develops small-molecule inhibitors aimed at one of those brakes — the interferon-gamma (IFN-γ) signaling pathway that shapes how cancers evade immune attack.
The goal is a new class of medicine for both solid and blood cancers, designed to make tumors visible to the immune system again. I contribute the discovery biology for this collaboration at WEHI — translating the target’s immunology into mechanistic evidence that guides the medicinal chemistry and structural biology teams working alongside us. The work sits at the frontier of immuno-oncology, where understanding a single signaling node can reshape how a cancer is treated.
