

Christine is the group leader of the Prostate Cancer Immunotherapy group at King’s College London. She is currently developing novel immunotherapeutic agents for treating prostate cancer.
Efthymia is a Research Fellow at King’s College London. She is currently researching the immunological and biological changes caused by novel immunotherapies on prostate cancer models.
After finishing her degree in Biochemistry at the University of Lisbon, Ana moved to the New University of Lisbon for a PhD in Microbial Biochemistry which was completed beginning 2015. In 2016 she started working as a Post-Doctoral researcher at Queen Mary University of London in a project that involved the biophysical characterization of a membrane protein.
Prostate Cancer Research funded researcher Dr Christine Galustian from King's College London talks about her work developing immunotherapies to treat prostate cancer.
The immune system protects us by recognising and attacking things which might make us ill, such as viruses, bacteria, or unhealthy cells.
One of the reasons cancer is so hard to treat is that cancer cells are very similar to our normal, healthy cells. This makes it difficult for our immune systems to recognise them as an enemy, and difficult to design drugs which can tell the difference between cancer and healthy cells.
Immunotherapy is one of the most exciting scientific advances in recent years. The idea is to retrain the immune system to identify and attack cancerous cells.
Dr Galustian’s treatment should have minimal side effects, and will require just a single injection. Also, her chemically-tailed IL-15 is easy to manufacture compared to other kinds of cancer treating drugs. Whilst vastly improving men’s lives and chances of survival, these immunotherapeutic drugs could also save the NHS considerable time and money.