IMMUNOTHERAPY RESEARCH

Analysing patients’ responses to immunotherapies

Dr Arutha Kulasinghe

Arutha’s grant is funded by our principal supporter, the Can Too Foundation.

Arutha is based at Queensland University of Technology.

Immunotherapies – the prevention or treatment of disease by stimulating an immune response – have been hailed as a “game changer” in the treatment of a number of solid tumours.

But there are currently no ways to identify whether a patient will actually respond to such therapy. In his Cure Cancer-supported research, Dr Arutha Kulasinghe aims to find out – by examining biopsies in head and neck, and non-small cell lung cancers, using novel spatial-mapping technology.

The research

In spatial mapping, high-resolution technology helps to show the biology of the tumour and cell-cell interactions. In this way Arutha aims to gain a better understanding of what’s happening inside these tumours, and to identify tumour-immune cell interactions that may help researchers predict a patient’s response to immunotherapy.

“My work aims to comprehensively assess the tumour tissue of the patient,” says Arutha, a National Health and Medical Research Council early career researcher at the Queensland University of Technology’s Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation. “If we can make individualised assessments of a patient’s tumour and identify biomarkers for targeted therapies, we’re likely to see the greatest benefit.”

Arutha believes one of his greatest achievements so far is his research in the liquid biopsy field. “This has been world-leading for head and neck cancers and with new applications for lung cancers,” he says. “The technologies assess a patient’s tumour non-invasively via a simple blood sample. This work is now being expanded on to determine whether patients can be monitored during therapy by a blood test.”

Arutha's inspiration

Arutha majored in Medical Microbiology in South Africa and moved to Australia in 2013 for his PhD which he completed at the Queensland University of Technology in 2017. Having seen relatives suffer from the disease, and observing first-hand how it impacts families, he was determined to move into cancer research.

“I was in the operating theatre in Colombo, Sri Lanka, when my grandfather’s tumour was being removed,” Arutha says. “I was also involved with his care after the operation and until he died. These experiences have served as motivations for me, and help keep me committed to the cause.”

The key to advances in treatments, he believes, is for people working in different disciplines to seek solutions collectively. He gained a more in-depth understanding of how essential this is when between 2016 and 2018 he visited laboratories in Europe and the US, where he observed clinicians, scientists, biomedical engineers, patient advocates, patients and allied health care professionals working together in lab environments to identify better ways to diagnose and treat cancer.

“Since returning to Brisbane I’ve tried to implement the methodologies I observed, and to be more patient-centric in my approach,” he says. “I believe we’re ultimately ‘better than the sum of our parts’.”

The importance of funding

The Cure Cancer grant will provide critical funding that Arutha needs not only to become an independent researcher, but to investigate other “important clinically-driven research questions for unmet clinical needs”. In particular, he wants to develop world-first approaches that will allow researchers to better understand the micro-environments inside tumours. This will, in turn, allow scientists to identify cells whose analysis may help predict what the response to therapies will be.

“On a personal level the grant allows me to pursue a career in cancer research – a career path I’m passionate about and fully committed to. We all know family and friends who’ve suffered from this deadly disease and finding better, more effective treatments is of the utmost importance.”

This instills in him a drive to work hard and persevere, and he’s “eternally grateful” to the donors and fundraisers for Cure Cancer for supporting his work.

“There’s been exponential growth of technologies and therapies to identify, monitor and treat cancer, and these treatments are becoming more and more tailored to individual patients. So in the future we’ll be able to use precision medicine approaches that will result in better patient outcomes and, hopefully, cures.”