Senior Research Officer
BSc (Hons), PhD
Dr Vanessa Fear has a Bachelor of Science (honours) with a double major in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from the University of Western Australia. (1990). She completed her PhD at the University of Western Australia (1998) in cellular biology and cell signalling under the supervision of Professor Peter Klinken. Subsequently she went on to a post-doctoral research placement at Murdoch University and developed an interest in the study of Type I interferon subtypes and their role in viral infection. Dr Fear then joined the Drug Discovery Unit at Telethon Kids Institute to develop their reverse yeast two hybrid screening technology. In 2009 Dr Fear commenced work with the Asthma and Allergy group at Telethon Kids Institute. In addition, Dr Fear initiated a research project investigating immune system dysfunction following burn injury and surgery with Professor Fiona Wood. Dr Fear then went on to investigate tumour surgery with lymph node resection and the corollary for onset of metastatic disease, and efficacy of immunotherapy.
Vanessa Fear has held a position with the Telethon Kids Institute, Genetic and Rare Diseases team as Senior Research Officer since 2018. Within this team her work focuses on application of CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing technology of pluripotent stem cells to assist with diagnoses of paediatric patients with genetic and rare diseases.
View her publications here.
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Publications
November 2020
Tumor Infiltrating Effector Memory Antigen-Specific CD8(+) T Cells Predict Response to Immune Checkpoint Therapy
Immune checkpoint therapy (ICT) results in durable responses in individuals with some cancers, but not all patients respond to treatment. ICT improves CD8+ cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) function, but changes in tumor antigen-specific CTLs post-ICT that correlate with successful responses have not been well characterized. Here, we studied murine tumor models with dichotomous responses to ICT.
Children's Cancers Published research Computational Biology Sarcoma Translational ResearchMay 2020Bilateral murine tumor models for characterizing the response to immune checkpoint blockade
This protocol describes bilateral murine tumor models that display a symmetrical yet dichotomous response to immune checkpoint blockade
Children's Cancers Published research Systems Immunology Computational Biology Sarcoma Translational ResearchApril 2020Diverse Anti-Tumor Immune Potential Driven by Individual IFNα Subtypes
Our data shows that the expression of distinct IFNα subtypes within the tumor microenvironment results in different anti-tumor activities
Children's Cancers Published research Academic Biostatistics Cancer ImmunotherapySeptember 2019Understanding acute burn injury as a chronic disease
The review will outline evidence of long-term health effects, possible mechanisms linking burn injury to long-term health and current research into burns as a chronic disease
Published research Cancer ImmunotherapyAugust 2019The role and therapeutic implications of T cells in cancer of the lung
This review examines the role of T cells in lung cancer, discussing the direction and clinical significance of current and future immunotherapeutic strategies
Published research Computational Biology -
Education and Qualifications
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Awards/Honours
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Active Collaborations