Thomas Yip awarded Postgraduate Student Thesis Prize

Thomas Yip has won this year’s Postgraduate Student Thesis Prize. This Prize is awarded annually to a student who has undertaken an outstanding research project to the highest standards during the course of their PhD study at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute.

Thomas Yip completed his PhD in the Halim Group, supervised by Dr Tim Halim. During his studies, Thomas investigated how normal communication between Group 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2s) and fibroblast cells appear to work together to maintain a healthy balance in the pancreas and how this communication is abnormally subverted in pancreatic cancer. His work advances our understanding of cell interactions that, when affected, may contribute to tumour progression in the early stages of the disease.

Pancreatic cancer is a leading cause of cancer-associated deaths and there has been little improvement in 10-year survival rates in the UK since 1970. Pancreatic tumours evade early detection, which is a major reason for this poor prognosis and indicates an urgent need for better understanding of the early stages of pancreatic cancer, which could allow scientists to develop methods to detect cancer earlier.

In recent years, work on pancreatic cancer and other cancers has found that neighbouring cells in the tumour environment can also promote or slow down tumour growth, with changes in the tumour microenvironment occurring from the earliest stages of pancreatic cancer.

Previous studies have shown that ILC2s, a type of immune cell associated with allergic disease, have both pro- and anti-tumour roles. Fibroblasts, cells that are important for the structural support of organs, have also been found to modulate immune cells for both the maintenance of healthy cells and protection against infection.

In cancer, the abnormal activation of fibroblast cells has been implicated with worse patient outcomes. For his postgraduate studies, Thomas sought to learn more about the crosstalk between ILC2s and fibroblasts to understand better how changes to this interaction can interrupt the maintenance of normal pancreatic health.

In healthy mice, ILC2s were associated with an increase in the number of fibroblasts. When these ILC2s were activated, they encouraged the growth of specific fibroblasts, while limiting the numbers of others. When the pancreas was injured in acute pancreatitis, signalling from ILC2s helped to promote the growth of specific fibroblasts, restoring the numbers of those depleted during injury.

In contrast, in tumour-bearing mice, abnormal communication between these two types of cells resulted in a dramatic expansion of both fibroblasts and ILC2s around early pancreatic tumours, which may then contribute to tumour progression.

To build upon these findings, Thomas is staying on at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute in a postdoctoral position with the Halim Group. He will investigate whether his findings could lead to potential new treatments for the disease.

Reflecting on his time as a postgraduate student at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, Thomas Yip said “Carrying out my PhD research at CRUK CI has been an immensely fulfilling and rewarding experience, despite the challenges and setbacks along the way. I have greatly benefited from and been inspired by all my driven and motivated fellow lab members in the Halim group, as well as by researchers from other groups in the Institute. I am also grateful to have been supported by its core facilities and non-academic staff over the course of this project. I am thankful to be awarded this thesis prize, and hope to be able to continue with meaningful research that would improve our understanding and treatments of different cancers.”

Dr Tim Halim, who supervised the project, said “Thomas is extremely deserving of this year’s Postgraduate Student Thesis Prize. His PhD is an outstanding piece of scientific research that makes a valuable contribution to the field, and I am delighted that he will be continuing in my lab to extend his findings further.”