Monday Lunch Live with Dr Shalin Naik and Dr Delphine Merino

Dr Delphine Merino

Dr Merino received her PhD in 2008 at the University of Burgundy, in France, studying the molecular mechanisms involved in the extrinsic pathway of apoptosis, in particular TRAIL-mediated cell death. In 2008, she joined the Molecular Genetics of Cancer Division at WEHI as postdoctoral fellow to study the role of the intrinsic pathway of apoptosis in immune homeostasis and cancer progression. Her work was extended to the study of BH3 mimetics, small molecules that inhibit pro-survival proteins. She studied the role of various BH3 mimetic (including venetoclax) in normal and malignant lymphoid cells. In 2012, she joined the Stem Cells and Cancer Division (WEHI), to study the effect of BH3 mimetics on various breast cancer subtypes. Altogether these pre-clinical studies have contributed to the clinical development of this new class of drugs for the treatment of both leukaemia and breast cancer.

Since April 2017, Dr Merino is a laboratory head at the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute. Her group focuses on tumour progression and heterogeneity. She is identifying the survival pathways responsible for the spread of cancer cells to different organs. This work will be useful not only to understand cancer progression, but also to identify new therapies for the treatment of advanced disease.

Dr Shalin Naik

Dr Naik is a graduate of the University of QLD (Microbiology & Biochemistry) where he did Honours with Professor David Hume on macrophage activation by CpG DNA. After a two year hiatus in London, he returned to Melbourne to do his PhD with Professor Ken Shortman on dendritic cell development at ther Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI). It was here he gained an interest in single cell tracking and fate determination in biology, and was awarded his PhD in 2006. Interested in the emerging technology of ‘cellular barcoding’ Dr Naik did his postdoc in the laboratory of Professor Ton Schumacher at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, where he traced the single cell output of haematopoietic stem and progenitor cells in vivo. After returning to WEHI in 2013, he was later appointed as a Laboratory Head in the Immunology Division where his lab uses single cell systems biology to investigate stem cells and cancer. He also leads the Single Cell Open Research Endeavour (SCORE) at WEHI – a collaborative centre for single cell technology, experimental design and computational projects, and is co-host of Ask the Doctor and Catalyst on the ABC.