Dr Regan Fu undertook his PhD in Biomedical Science with the University of Auckland under the supervision of Associate Professor Adam Patterson, Associate Professor Jeff Smaill and the Malaghan Institute's Professor Ian Hermans. His thesis focused on combining immunotherapy with novel hypoxia-activated prodrugs, to improve immunotherapy effectiveness against solid tumours.
Regan is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher as part of the Hermans Laboratory and has an ongoing collaboration with the Auckland Cancer Society Research Centre.
Research interests
"My research interests are tumour hypoxia and cancer immunotherapy. Despite recent clinical successes and approval of numerous checkpoint blockades, the objective response rate as a single therapy associated with such treatment is only around 10-40% across different tumour types. This indicates the presence of underlying mechanisms of resistance which limits the development of a long-term immunity against tumours and the necessity to overcome antagonism within the tumour microenvironment to elicit a robust anti-tumour immune response.
"My current project involves investigating the combinatorial interaction between novel hypoxia-activated prodrugs and checkpoint inhibitors using various syngeneic murine cancer models, and to understand the mechanisms behind the improved anti-tumour activity through mechanistic studies. "
