Dr Rachael Zemek is a Postdoctoral researcher within the Sarcoma Research group led by Dr. Joost Lesterhuis at the Telethon Kids Institute. She graduated from her PhD from UWA in 2019, where her research found ways to improve the response to immune checkpoint blockade therapy for cancer.

Rachael is now extending her research to target childhood cancers such as sarcoma which is resistant to immune therapies. Rachael’s research will explore how surgery to remove cancer creates a local immune response and develop ways to manipulate this immune response to kill remaining cancer cells.