Gregor S Kijanka 31st Lorne Cancer Conference 2019

Gregor S Kijanka

Dr. Gregor Kijanka Senior Research Fellow at Mater Research in Brisbane, heading the Immune Profiling and Cancer Research Group. The focus of Dr. Kijanka’s work has been on understanding of humoral immunity in context of cancer and the application of those concepts in early diagnosis of cancer and cancer immunotherapy. Dr. Kijanka’s laboratory utilises high-content protein array technology and microfluidics to investigate humoral and cellular immune responses in clinical sample collections from patient cohorts and clinical trials. Since IgG antibodies require linked antigen recognition by cognate B and CD4+ T cells, antibody profiles provide a novel method to investigate a critical arm of anti-tumour immunity. His research into colorectal cancer immunity has led the discovery of a diagnostic biomarker panel for triaging patients for colonoscopy. More recent work investigates humoral changes in patients undergoing cancer immunotherapy. Dr. Kijanka has graduated from the Technical University Berlin and has conducted his Master research at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin, Germany. He received his PhD for the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in 2008, where he investigates humoral immunity in colorectal cancer at the Centre for Human Proteomics. Dr. Kijanka had a two-year post-doctoral position at Prof Jens Ducrée’s Microfluidics group at Dublin City University in Ireland. In 2010, He received the Irish Cancer Society Fellowship supporting his research into humoral immunity in cancer at the Biomedical Diagnostics Institute in Dublin, Ireland. Dr. Kijanka has moved his lab to the Mater Research Institute in Brisbane in 2016/17, where he currently leads the Immune Profiling and Cancer Research Group. Dr. Kijanka Gregor has authored numerous scientific publications in the field of cancer immunity and holds patents in cancer diagnostics and microfluidics. He has been awarded the prestigious Irish Cancer Society Fellowship for his work on colorectal cancer and was the recipient of several awards including the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland (RAMI) medal for excellence in oncology research in 2011. He was awarded the Chartered Engineer title from Engineers Ireland in 2014 for his achievements in the development of cutting-edge biomedical technologies for clinical use. Dr. Kijanka also received the Fujitsu Innovation Award for the commercialisation of a diagnostic colorectal cancer panel in 2015. He has served as a Scientific Advisory Board member for the Early Diagnosis Consortium (EDC) Cancer Research UK.

Abstracts this author is presenting: