Malaghan Institute of Medical Research
Research in Wellington

Our cancer immunotherapies work by stimulating the body's immune system to fight cancer. Our vaccines programme is developing technologies that help the immune system target cancer cells more precisely. The Vaccine Therapy Programme investigating therapeutic vaccines that stimulate and promote particular immune cells to fight cancer. Gut inflammation researching the mechanisms that regulate intestinal homeostasis and gut health. Studying the molecules on the surface of a cell enables researchers to discover more about the processes going on inside a cell, as well as highlighting unexpected relationships between different types of cells. Dendritic cells are a specialised type of immune cell that are found in most tissues of the body where they control the activation of immune responses. Developing a vaccine for asthma dendritic cells are necessary for lung inflammation, so they are a potential target of immunotherapies to suppress disease. Professor Graham Le Gros leads research programmes studying the T cells that cause the symptoms of asthma and allergy in the skin, lung and gut. Professor Mike Berridge leads a research programme investigating the role of mitochondria the energy powerhouses of our cells in cancer and other diseases. To address this issue, Professor Berridge was awarded 150,00 from the Health Research Council of New Zealand to develop technology that will allow scientists to manipulate mitochondrial genomes. In a tumour, dendritic cells that would normally instruct the immune system to make a response to invading cancer cells are disempowered. Although all the cell types involved are found in humans, their distribution and number is different to the animals we have been studying. Professor Mike Berridge and his Griffith University collaborators recently published a review of the field of mitochondrial transfer between cells, which he says puts the Malaghan Institute’s work into the context of other research internationally. Dr Melanie McConnell, Malaghan Institute Research Associate and Senior Lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington, received funding of more than 1 million from the Health Research Council in 2015 to research the transfer of mitochondria between cells in the brain. Understanding the processes that go on could be useful for developing new therapies for brain disease. In glioblastoma, a highly treatment resistant brain cancer, the cancer cells may be using the same mitochondrial transfer mechanism to their advantage. In the experiment, glioblastoma cells were injured in the same way as normal brain cells, and mitochondrial transfer of the two types of cell was compared. Our research is focussed on finding better therapies for people with multiple sclerosis MS by optimising current treatments and developing new drugs for various forms of the disease. By tracking these changes, valuable information about which therapies would benefit particular groups of patients can be gained. Receive our monthly communications and keep up to date with our research and events. We study the mechanisms that parasitic worms use to subdue the immune system because of their potential to dampen harmful inflammatory immune responses, such as those made in asthma and allergy. The mechanisms by which these organisms subdue the immune system have been studied at the Malaghan Institute for many years because of their potential to dampen harmful inflammatory immune responses, such as those made in asthma and allergy