Dr Doreen Lau
Lecturer in Inflammation, Ageing and Cancer Biology

Research area(s)

Cancer immunology, immunotherapy, biomarkers, imaging science, biomedical engineering

Research Interests

Dr Lau’s research group integrates cancer immunology, experimental modelling, and advanced imaging to understand and overcome barriers to effective immunotherapy. The team investigates how immune recognition of cancer is shaped by antigen presentation, the tumour microenvironment, and host factors, and how these interactions determine treatment response, resistance, and immune-related toxicity.

To address these questions, the group combines systems immunology and multi-omic profiling to study cancer and immune cells at genetic, protein, and metabolic levels in both patient samples and preclinical models. They also employ chemical biology, bioengineering, and innovative in vitro and ex vivo platforms to dissect tumour–immune crosstalk, alongside advanced imaging technologies to visualise immune activity and tumour biology from single cells to the whole organism.

These efforts aim to uncover fundamental principles of immune–tumour interactions and translate them into biomarkers, diagnostics, and imaging tools for patient stratification, therapy monitoring, and more effective immunotherapies. In parallel, the group contributes to early-phase drug discovery by facilitating the screening and validation of novel immunotherapeutics, with approaches that also have broader relevance to chronic inflammation, infection, and autoimmune diseases.

Research Collaboration

Open to academic collaboration, industry partnerships and joint PhD supervision.

Grants