Marian Burr
Doctor Marian Burr is a clinician scientist fellow in the Cancer Epigenetics Laboratory at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and registrar in anatomical pathology. Her research focuses on uncovering conserved molecular mechanisms exploited by cancer cells to evade the host immune response. Marian undertook her PhD at the University of Cambridge where she identified key cellular quality control pathways regulating the assembly of MHC class I molecules with β2-microglobulin and a peptide antigen.
Following clinical specialty training in anatomical pathology, she secured a Cancer Research UK Fellowship in 2015 to pursue postdoctoral research in Cambridge and subsequently at the Peter Mac. In 2017 she identified CMTM6 as a binding partner and regulator of PD-L1 in cancer cells. This discovery has opened new avenues of research and lead to the establishment of a company to develop therapeutic approaches to target the CMTM6-PD-L1 interaction. Her recent work exploring the transcriptional regulation of antigen presentation has revealed how cancer cells can co-opt a conserved physiological function of a key epigenetic repressive complex to shut down MHC class I antigen processing and evade immune surveillance
Abstracts this author is presenting: