Coast teacher inspires research

Two former science lab partners at Whangaparāoa College have gone on to advance ground-breaking cancer research at Wellington’s Malaghan Institute of Medical Research.

Dr Yasmin Nouri and Dr Andrew Wilson, both aged 28, recently completed their PhDs in CAR T-cell therapy, a revolutionary new type of cancer immunotherapy that reprogrammes a person’s own immune cells to detect and kill their cancer. The institute is currently running New Zealand’s first CAR T-cell clinical trial.

Yasmin started at Whangaparāoa College in Year 7 (2006) and met Andrew over a decade ago when he started at the college, having recently moved to Gulf Harbour from the United Kingdom. Both still have family on the Hibiscus Coast.

The pair were lab partners in Year 12 Chemistry and credit their biology teacher, Kelly Marsh-Smallman, as a big influence.

“I discovered my love for biology in Mrs Marsh-Smallman’s class,” Yasmin says. “I think it just takes one good teacher to ignite a passion for something in a student and she was that person for me.”

“It was during Mrs Marsh-Smallman’s classes that we first started learning about how a tiny little mutation in your DNA code can cause such drastic health effects, including cancer, and it was during those classes that I began thinking about this as a career path,” Andrew says.

Kelly Marsh-Smallman finished teaching at the college in 2014, by which time she was Acting Head of Science.

After graduating from college in 2012, Andrew and Yasmin both moved to Wellington to pursue their passion for biology at Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington. They then continued their postgraduate studies with

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the University of Otago, undertaking their PhD research at the Malaghan Institute in the CAR T-cell therapy programme.

“It’s crazy to think that Yasmin and I ended up taking very similar paths alongside each other, culminating in handing in our PhD theses on the same day!” Andrew says.

Andrew’s PhD research aimed to understand the process of turning a patient’s T-cells into CAR T-cells by pinpointing how many modified genes are being inserted.

Yasmin’s focused on identifying the safety profile, effectiveness, and potential future applications of the CAR T-cells.

Since completing their PhDs, Yasmin has moved to Melbourne to take up a research position at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute where she is working on applying CAR T-cell therapy to brain tumours. Andrew has remained at the Malaghan Institute to extend his research into understanding CAR T-cells on a molecular level.

Yasmin is deeply interested in the mechanisms of cancer, and the challenges of treating it.

“It is an incredibly complex puzzle but it is not unsolvable and I love putting my brain to work on deciphering a little piece of it every day,” she says. “Knowing that all of us have likely experienced the ravages of cancer in some way and want an answer to this horrific disease is what gets me to the lab every day. The work I am doing at the moment involves a lot of interacting with patients and their families, and vastly improved prognoses, and I would love nothing more in my life than to contribute what I can towards that.”

Advice for students thinking about getting into biomedical/cancer research

• Yasmin: “Do it!! I think the key to success in science is genuine intrigue. Everything else is teachable, but if you’re someone inherently interested in the world around you or the world within you then there is no better career. There are definitely hard days, but I feel like one of the luckiest people in the world that I get to spend every day working on the answers to some of life’s most challenging and interesting questions.” although you’re often meeting them under devastating circumstances, there is always a feeling of renewed hope after sharing our research. I truly envision that one day all cancers will become treatable diseases with

• Andrew: “I would encourage college students who are thinking of pursuing biomedical or cancer research to find their “why”. There will be good days, and there will be tougher days where you want to give up, but having your “why” in the back of your mind will help push you through the tougher days,” he says.

Flood response report cost revealed

2 9 4 5 3 1 6 7 8 3 7 1 6 8 9 5 4 2 6 8 5 2 7 4 9 1 3 8 4 3 1 6 2 7 5 9 7 5 6 9 4 8 3 2 1 9 1 2 7 5 3 4 8 6 4 6 8 3 1 5 2 9 7 1 2 7 4 9 6 8 3 5 5 3 9 8 2 7 1 6 4 T H E S O L U T O N

GUTTER FOAM

The independent review which Auckland Council commissioned into its flood response (HM May 1) came at significant cost to ratepayers. Information obtained by Hibiscus Matters under the Official Information Act reveals that the total cost was $185,380.

The review was carried out by Mike Bush of Bush International Consulting.

It was designed to be a short, sharp ‘rapid’ examination of what happened. Launched on February 5, the review team had to complete its work in just four weeks, by March 6.

It utilised recorded meetings of Auckland Emergency Management’s (AEM) meetings over the period in question, reviewed thousands of relevant documents, interviewed the Mayor and staff, the Council chief executive and executives, members

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