Cancer researcher Dr Mara Zeissig leads a team developing treatments for pancreatic and lung cancer, predicting the diseases will become manageable chronic conditions within our lifetimes.
Personalised Vaccines and Immunotherapy Pipeline
Immunotherapies are transitioning from last-resort measures to frontline treatments, offering new hope for difficult cancers according to Dr Mara Zeissig. According to Zeissig, researchers already analyze individual tumor profiles to generate personalized vaccines tailored directly to a patient’s specific cancer cells.
“There’s a lot of promise, like there are people that are being cured already from immunotherapies that are really effective for their particular type of cancer,” Zeissig said. “If you can harness your immune system to fight off the cancer, it’s going to clear every single cancer cell in your body, and that’s where I see there being a cure,” she said.
Preclinical Models and Genetic Screening at SAiGENCI
Dr Zeissig runs a laboratory focused on lung and pancreatic cancer at the South Australian immunoGENomics Cancer Institute (SAiGENCI) at Adelaide University alongside a team of five other researchers. According to Zeissig, the team investigates the biology of these cancers to determine how malignant cells evade immune responses and targeted therapies.
The laboratory uses preclinical mouse models, growing pancreatic or lung cancer cells and culturing them with immune cells to run genetic screens. Zeissig stated that these large-scale screens identify which gene deletions allow immune cells to successfully destroy tumor cells, helping researchers find entirely new drug targets over optimization periods lasting up to a year.
Survival Rates and Funding Realities for Lung and Pancreatic Cancer
According to the Cancer Council, pancreatic cancer is the eighth most diagnosed cancer in Australia, with 4,641 diagnosed in 2024, while 15,000 Australians receive a lung cancer diagnosis annually. Zeissig noted that lung and pancreatic cancers remain under-researched and underfunded compared to breast and prostate cancer, showing no significant improvement in survival rates over the past 10 to 15 years.
Did you know? Both lung and pancreatic cancers frequently share similar genetic mutations involving the KRAS gene, allowing researchers to study their underlying tumor biology and test similar pharmaceutical drugs side by side, despite having distinct physical tumor structures.
Patients with lung and pancreatic cancers typically present at clinics during late-stage disease phases, leaving fewer treatment alternatives. Zeissig spends roughly 50 percent of her time applying for grants to sustain the lab, with organizations like the Cancer Council providing vital funding alongside community collaboration.
Frequently Asked Questions
According to Dr Zeissig, the lab focuses on non-small cell lung cancer, which represents the more common type of lung cancer associated with smoking and an increasing number of non-smokers.
How do personalized cancer vaccines work?
Researchers examine the specific cancer makeup within an individual patient and generate a targeted vaccine designed specifically to help that person’s immune system destroy their unique tumor cells, according to Zeissig.
Research takes place at the South Australian immunoGENomics Cancer Institute (SAiGENCI) located at Adelaide University within the North Terrace biomedical precinct, according to Zeissig.
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