Peter Mac researcher awarded Fellowship to advance CAR T-cell therapy
01 September 2025
Peter Mac’s Professor Mark Dawson has been awarded the 2025 Klempfner Snowdome Fellowship.
The fellowship will drive pioneering research to develop more effective Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies.
CAR T-cell therapy has revolutionised blood cancer treatment by reprogramming a patient’s own immune cells to recognise and destroy cancer cells. However, half the patients achieving remission still relapse following treatment and Professor Dawson aims to change that statistic.
Professor Dawson said that a major challenge with this therapy is that T-cells collected from patients are often weakened by prior chemotherapy or radiotherapy, which can compromise the effectiveness of CAR-T products.
“My lab will focus on a new approach which involves generating CAR T-cells from blood stem cells, rather than relying on impaired T-cells,” he said.
“This strategy could produce a robust and diverse supply of healthy immune cells, dramatically enhancing outcomes for people with blood cancers.
“This fellowship provides an extraordinary opportunity to fundamentally improve CAR T-cell therapies.”
Professor Dawson, a Physician-Scientist, Program Head, and an Associate Director of Research at Peter Mac, will mentor two rising clinician-scientists, Dr Phillip Nguyen and Dr Tessa Potenzy, to lead laboratory work to expand blood stem cells and engineer them into next-generation anti-cancer therapies.
Peter Mac’s Executive Director of Cancer Research, Professor Ricky Johnstone, said this project exemplifies the power of philanthropy in accelerating breakthroughs.
“The Klempfner family and the Snowdome Foundation have been long-term champions of blood cancer research here at Peter Mac,” he said.
“Their investment in early-career scientists and bold, innovative ideas is helping us move closer to cures for blood cancers that were once considered untreatable.”