Research into childhood cancer stem cell transplant patients, CAR T cell therapy, and HPV screening rates in rural India awarded the 2025 Picchi Awards for Excellence in Cancer Research.
Three PhD students from VCCC Alliance member organisations have been awarded the 2025 Picchi Awards for research aiming to improve outcomes for childhood cancer stem cell transplant patients, CAR T cell therapy, and HPV screening rates in rural India.
The winners receive $10,000 each, generously donated by The Picchi Brothers Foundation. The foundation aims to inspire and encourage the next generation of cancer research leaders by providing recipients with the opportunity to travel internationally for conferences or collaborative works to support their development towards research independence.
CLINICAL SCIENCEThesis: BREATH: Breathe Easier after Allogeneic Transplantation (Haematopoietic): Pulmonary biological profiling in children post allogeneic haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HCT): understanding infectious and non-infectious complications
Dr Hannah Walker is a paediatric oncologist at the Children’s Cancer Centre, The Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne in the final year of her PhD - a collaborative project between Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, The Royal Children’s Hospital and The University of Melbourne. Her thesis is exploring the poor outcomes of children post-stem cell transplant (called haematopoietic stem cell transplant, or HCT) who develop lung complications, and she hopes this research and its translation will improve the care for these children.
While HCT could cure children’s cancer, her research has highlighted that lung infections and inflammatory complications increased the chance of mortality after HCT at least four-fold. She designed and led the ‘BREATH’ study, involving multi-omic inflammatory profiling of children before and after HCT. “The aim of this component of my PhD is to identify biomarkers to improve our methods of pulmonary disease prevention, diagnosis and targeted therapy,” she said.
BASIC SCIENCEIdentifying Optimal Tumour-specific Promoters for CRISPR/Cas9 Engineering of Armoured CAR T Cells with Enhanced Safety and Efficacy
Kah Min Yap is using CRISPR/Cas9 technology to improve CAR T cell therapy, a type of therapy that harnesses the power of the immune system to fight cancer. Using CRISPR/Cas9, her research precisely inserts an anti-cancer factor into a specified genomic location to generate ‘armoured’ CAR T cells that produce this factor exclusively within the tumour, thereby minimising damage to healthy tissues. Her research has shown that these CRISPR-engineered armoured CAR T cells perform better and are safer than standard CAR T cells. These preclinical findings have led to an international patent, funding from the National Breast Cancer Foundation and the Cancer Research Institute (US), as well as multiple collaborations.
“Our lab is actively working to translate this work into the clinic, starting with multiple myeloma,” she said, adding that additional funding has been secured from the Snowdome Foundation to support preclinical studies in multiple myeloma models. “The long-term goal is to initiate a clinical trial in multiple myeloma patients, with plans to eventually expand into solid tumour indications. This technique has the potential to replace conventional manufacturing methods and generate armoured CAR T cells with a more favourable safety profile for clinical translation.”
POPULATION HEALTHThesis: Co-designing and testing scalable programmatic approaches to HPV-based cervical screening in vulnerable populations in India - implementation research
Anu Oommen is a public health physician working in the Department of Community Medicine, Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore, a not-for profit hospital in Tamil Nadu, south India. She has operated a population-based cervical and breast cancer screening program since 2014 for rural areas surrounding the hospital, where she is seeking to improve screening rates.
Anu’s PhD is the formative phase of the SHE-CAN trial – a collaboration between CMC Vellore, the Australian Centre for Prevention of Cervical Cancer (ACPC), and others including the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, funded by the Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases. The study is co-designing, implementing and evaluating programmatic approaches for delivery for HPV self-collection for women from vulnerable settings in India (tribal, rural and urban low resource settings).
“As part of my PhD, I have been leading the design of various tools for the SHE-CAN implementation research trial and planning the methods for implementation and evaluation,” Anu said. “As a ‘woman leader’, working on women’s issues, in a country where there is a lot of inequity in access to healthcare especially for women from vulnerable settings, my goal is to use my career, privileges and opportunities to uplift women who are not as fortunate as I am.” In future, Anu hopes to guide PhD students at CMC Vellore in implementation research projects.
Recipients will discuss their award-winning research at future Monday Lunch Live events.
