Kristen Radford

Professor Radford leads the Cancer Immunotherapies Group at Mater Research Institute-UQ. Her research interests are focussed on understanding how the human immune system can be trained to recognise and fight cancer for the development of vaccines and immunotherapies.

Professor Radford’s leadership and globally-recognised expertise in the fields of human dendritic cell (DC), immuno-oncology, immunotherapy, cancer vaccines and humanised mice is evidenced by 59 publications in top journals including J Exp Med, Nat Immunol, Immunity and more than 50 invitations to speak. She has attracted >$6 million in funding as a Chief Investigator and >$5 million as a Co-Investigator. She has been recognised by awards including NHMRC CDF2 (2011-2014), Mater Medal for Outstanding Research Contribution 2015, ASI Miller Award 2018, a 2021 Fulbright Future Fellowship and Fellowship of the QLD Academy of Arts and Science.

Professor Radford’s expertise include development and clinical trial of the one of the first vaccines to use human circulating blood conventional DC (cDC) for cancer immunotherapy that was translated to a first-in-human clinical trial for metastatic prostate cancer. Her group was the first to functionally characterise the human cDC1 subset) and propose their potential as next-generation cancer vaccines, a finding described by international leaders as “a needle in the cancer vaccine haystack”. She has pioneered techniques to isolate cDC1s from human tissues, culture them from CD34 progenitors in vitro and in humanised mice in vivo and developed a suite of assays to interrogate their phenotype and function, including priming of human tumour specific immune responses. These have been applied to develop novel cancer vaccines that target human cDC1 in vivo, that are now being translated for commercialisation and clinical trial.

Professor Radford has pioneered the development of innovative models that faithfully replicate the human immune system (humanised mice). These are in high demand globally to enhance research impact and increase the speed and accuracy of immunotherapy drug development in oncology, autoimmunity, inflammatory and infectious disease. She has applied these to wide range of applications including hematopoeisis, cancer immunotherapy and autoimmune disease.