Dr marie-liesse asselin-labat biography

Lung cancer is a devastating disease causing 1.8 million deaths worldwide every year. Immunotherapy is a type of treatment that increases the elimination of tumour cells by an individuals own immune cells. Immunotherapy has dramatically improved the survival of many lung cancer patients. However, only a small proportion of patients respond to this type of therapy.

To identify new ways to improve response to immunotherapy, we need a comprehensive understanding of the communication between tumour and immune cells. The Asselin-Labat laboratory uses novel approaches that integrate spatial information with molecular characterisation and genomic screening to achieve this goal.

Our research focuses on studying the lung epithelium and the role of surrounding immune cells in maintaining lung health and controlling lung cancer formation. We work with preclinical models as well as clinical samples to assess the role of immune cells in maintaining lung homeostasis. We investigate mechanisms developed by tumour cells to escape immune surveillance. Our aim is to identify ways to reactivate immune activity against cancer cells with the ultimate goal to improve outcomes for people with lung cancer.

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3D OPT imaging showing Keratin 5 expression in Ezh2 cKO embryonic lung

Australian scientists have discovered that the immune environments of smokers’ lungs are substantially different compared to people who have never smoked.

Their findings, published in Cancer Cell, may explain why only 20% of patients with lung cancer responded to immunotherapy treatment.

“There’s a very different inflammatory environment in the lungs of smokers compared to those who had never smoked,” says Professor Daniel Gray, from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI) of Medical Research in Australia, who co-led the research.

“We found a specific subset of T cells, called TRM, that are highly enriched in smokers. In these patients, the TRM apply pressure on the tumour to evade the body’s immune response.

“Immunotherapy is less effective against tumours that acquire this property.”

Tissue-resident memory T cells (TRM) are a subset of T-cells – a type of white blood cell that helps your immune system fight infections and diseases. Memory T cells hang around after they’ve been exposed to an antigen, like one on the surface of a cancer cell, so that the next time they encounter it the immune system can launch a response more quickly.

TRM cells are non-circulating, instead they stay put in areas such as the gastrointestinal tract, skin, reproductive tract, and lungs.

This study suggests that, because there are a greater proportion of TRM cells in smoker lungs, tumours evolve and evade immunotherapy – a type of treatment that involves using the body’s own immune system to fight cancer.

“It shows that we need to take a different approach to treating smoker and non-smoker patients with lung cancer,” says co-lead author Marie-Liesse Asselin-Labat, Associate Professor at WEHI.

“In smokers, we need to make the tumours visible to the immune system for immunotherapy to be effective, whereas in non-smoker patients we need to activ

Leiwe M, Asselin-Labat M-L. The dynamics of the metastatic niche: Lung alveolar type 2 cell reprogramming and cancer cell stemness. Developmental Cell. 2024;59(18):10.1016/j.devcel.2024.07.014

VanderDoes J, Marceaux C, Yokote K, Asselin-Labat M-L, Rice G, Hywood JD. Using random forests to uncover the predictive power of distance-varying cell interactions in tumor microenvironments. PLOS Computational Biology. 2024;20(6):10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011361

Bhuva DD, Tan CW, Salim A, Marceaux C, Pickering MA, Chen J, Kharbanda M, Jin X, Liu N, Feher K, Putri G, Tilley WD, Hickey TE, Asselin-Labat M-L, Phipson B, Davis MJ. Library size confounds biology in spatial transcriptomics data. Genome Biology. 2024;25(1):10.1186/s13059-024-03241-7

Chaudhary P, Xu X, Wang G, Hoj JP, Rampersad RR, Asselin-Labat M-L, Ting S, Kim W, Tamayo P, Pendergast AM, Onaitis MW. Activation of KrasG12D in Subset of Alveolar Type II Cells Enhances Cellular Plasticity in Lung Adenocarcinoma. Cancer Research Communications. 2023;3(11):10.1158/2767-9764.crc-22-0408

Malchers F, Nogova L, van Attekum MH, Maas L, Brägelmann J, Bartenhagen C, Girard L, Bosco G, Dahmen I, Michels S, Weeden CE, Scheel AH, Meder L, Golfmann K, Schuldt P, Siemanowski J, Rehker J, Merkelbach-Bruse S, Menon R, Gautschi O, Heuckmann JM, Brambilla E, Asselin-Labat M-L, Persigehl T, Minna JD, Walczak H, Ullrich RT, Fischer M, Reinhardt HC, Wolf J, Büttner R, Peifer M, George J, Thomas RK. Somatic rearrangements causing oncogenic ectodomain deletions of FGFR1 in squamous cell lung cancer. Journal of Clinical Investigation. 2023;133(21):10.1172/jci170217

Rangamuwa K, Christie M, Leong T, Aloe C, Yokote K, Batey D, Asselin-Labat M-L, Antippa P, Irving L, Bozinovski S, Steinfort D. P1.09-01 Anti-Cancer Immune Activation Post Bronchoscopic Thermal Ablation in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer. Journal of Thoracic Oncology. 2023;18(11):10.1016/j.jtho.2023.09.315

Weeden CE, Gayevskiy V, Marceaux C, Batey D, Ta

Understanding the differences in the evolution of lung cancer between smokers and non-smokers could be the key to unlocking new treatments.

Researchers from WEHI (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research) in Melbourne, Australia, evaluated lung cancer progression in smokers, compared with people who had never smoked, and found substantial changes in the way the body responds.

The study helps explain why immunotherapy isn't always effective in treating the disease.

Of the 13,000 Australians diagnosed with lung cancer every year, 10% of men and 35% of women have no history of smoking.

The new research, published in Cancer Cell, was co-led by WEHI Associate Professor Marie-Liesse Asselin-Labat and Professor Daniel Gray. The research was a collaboration between WEHI, the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, the Royal Melbourne Hospital, the University of Melbourne, Austin Health and the Francis Crick Institute in London.

Associate Professor Asselin-Labat said differences in the immune reactions between smokers and non-smokers may explain why only 20% of patients with lung cancer responded to immunotherapy treatment.

"It shows that we need to take a different approach to treating smoker and non-smoker patients with lung cancer,"she said.

"In smokers, we need to make the tumors visible to the immune system for immunotherapy to be effective, whereas in non-smoker patients we need to activate a dormant immune system to enable it to fight the tumor."

Professor Gray said the research teams had made interesting observations about the environment in which tumors grow and the difference in disease progression between smokers and non-smokers.

"There's a very different inflammatory environment in the lungs of smokers compared to those who had never smoked," he said.

"We found a specific subset of T cells, called TRM, that are highly enriched in smokers. In these patients, the TRM apply pressure on the tumor to evade the body's immune re