Katie Owen
Having recently completed her PhD in cancer metastasis and immunology in late 2018 at La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science, Dr. Katie Owen is a current research fellow at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in the laboratory headed by Associate Professor Belinda Parker. As an active member of the international prostate cancer research consortium, ProMis, Katie’s work focuses understanding the immunoregulatory mechanisms that govern bone metastasis, including prostate cancer cell dormancy and eventual outgrowth in the bone-tumour microenvironment. Her research has identified that suppression of a key immune signalling pathway in prostate cancer cells in bone impacts both bone homeostasis and immune surveillance to engender a tumour-permissive niche. These findings have led to the development of a novel immune-based combinatorial approaches that decrease bone-metastatic outgrowth and enhance the effectiveness of agents solely aimed at systemic immune activation. Stemming from this research, she is currently working on the development of immune signalling biomarkers of bone metastasis under the PRECEPT research program for clinical implementation, and how therapeutic induction of tumour-intrinsic immune pathways impacts prostate cancer diagnosis, risk stratification and patient outcome.
Abstracts this author is presenting: