A Tongan researcher looking into cancer vaccines is a winner at this year’s MacDiarmid Young Scientists of the Year Awards.
Research to devise improved cancer vaccines has won the Advancing Human Health and Wellbeing category of this year’s MacDiarmid Young Scientists of the Year Awards.
Dianne Sika-Paotonu is working at the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research as part of her PhD studies and researching potent new vaccines that may be able to activate a patient’s immune cells to destroy cancer tissue.
The MacDiarmid Awards are presented annually by the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology, with Fisher & Paykel Appliances as principal sponsor. Dianne is awarded NZD$5,000 for winning the Advancing Human Health and Wellbeing category which is sponsored by the Health Research Council of New Zealand.
Dianne’s research centres on dendritic cells which are a rare group of immune cells in the human body responsible for initiating immune responses. When functioning properly, dendritic cells can activate T-cells, considered the foot soldiers of immune response, to destroy cancer tissue. Dendritic cells in a cancer patient often don’t work as they should.
A therapeutic cancer vaccine is made by loading properly functioning dendritic cells with tumour fragments and injecting them back into the body. Although this prompts T-cells to become cancer fighters, this treatment is not yet powerful enough to act as a frontline cancer therapy.
Dianne’s breakthrough strategies involve coating the dendritic cells with a sea sponge extract (alpha-galactosylceramide) which causes the dendritic cells to work harder at turning the T-cells into cancer killers, promoting a more potent tumour-killing response than cancer vaccines currently being trialled.
The research is helping Dianne keep a promise she made as an eight year old to find a cure for cancer after a close family friend died of the disease. After leaving Wellington Girls’ College, Dianne worked at Wellington Hospital and studied through AUT for anaesthetic technician qualifications before completing a Masters in Biomedical Science (Hons) at Victoria University of Wellington.
Dianne is also a senior mentor in the Te Ropu Awhina programme at Victoria University. Her achievements and Tongan background are regularly highlighted as an example to Pacific Island and Maori students on campus and in the secondary schools she visits as part her Awhina role to encourage participation and success in science and technology.
Runner up in the Advancing Human Health and Wellbeing category is Hae Joo Kang, from the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Auckland for her research into drug therapies against the disease-causing Streptococcus bacteria.
• Dianne’s Tongan heritage is traced to Vava’u, through her father Tevita (David) Sika and Ha’apai though her mother Teisa Latu. Her parents spent much of their upbringing in Nuku’alofa, Tongatapu before moving to New Zealand in 1973 where they settled in Wellington.
