The interactions between malignant cells and immune cells that regulate tumour progression. Her research focuses on two main areas - assessing the impact inflammation (and other patient characteristics) have on the quality use of chemotherapy medicines and secondly, identifying new drug targets for inflammation to improve patient outcomes.
Quality use of medicines projects: Chemotherapy drugs are approved in clinical trials of patients, which only represent the best 5-10% of all cancer patients. Patients who are old, frail with multiple co-morbidities and medications are excluded from most clinical trial, but are the majority of people being treated with cancer. Understanding how chemotherapy drugs are used in the real-world is important to better inform clinical practice for the broader Australian cancer population. Dr Charles' group conducted data linkage studies with prescribing administration records, electronic health records and cancer registries to investigate the drug utilisation and health outcomes within sub-groups of the broader population of cancer patients to better understand how to use medicines more effectively.
Drug Target Discover projects: Malignant cells secrete cytokines and chemokines that alter the phenotype and behaviour of tumour-associated leucocytes to promote tumour growth and orchestrate the immunosuppressant behaviour of the adaptive immune responses. Inhibiting the communication between cancer cells and immune cells is becoming an exciting potential target for cancer intervention strategies. Dr Charles conducts translational and clinical studies aimed to identify new molecular targets in cancer and in collaboration with biological chemists at the University of Sydney design and evaluate new cancer therapeutic agents.
