Biography

I am a molecular biologist with an honours degree in Medical Biotechnology (The University of Abertay, Dundee, Scotland) and a PhD in Physiology and Medicine from the University of Otago (Dunedin, New Zealand) specialising in assessing biomarkers in formalin-fixed tissues and development and use of preclinical disease models. I moved to Australia to pursue my passion for cancer research and employ my expertise in breast cancer brain metastases in Professor Lakhani's laboratory. My research objectives are aimed towards understanding and developing therapeutic interventions for breast cancer and metastases. My program of work comprises of two main interests; brain metastasis and role of neo-antigens in triple-negative breast cancer. I am interested in understanding the influence of the unique tumour/tissue microenvironment (TME) in metastases, which is known to play a role in this process. To achieve this I have established brain metastatic tumours from the breast using intra-cranial preclinical models along with molecular biology, genomic and proteomic tools. I also routinely analyse archival patient tumour tissues for biomarkers. In triple-negative breast cancer I am determining biomarkers in the neoadjuvant setting especially neo-antigens. I am exploring the expression of neo-antigens using immuno-histochemical techniques in patients with neoadjuvant chemotherapy in formalin fixed breast tumour tissues. I use a variety of statistical algorithms and clinical data analysis tools to achieve this.

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Priyakshi identifies as culturally and linguistically diverse.