Genitourinary cancers are found in urinary tract (kidney and bladder) and male reproductive system (prostate, testicles and penis).
Biography
Dr. Lewis Au is a medical oncologist and post-doctoral research fellow, with a focus on kidney cancer.
He obtained his undergraduate medical degree from The University of Melbourne in 2009, and his Medical Oncology specialist qualification in 2017. Over the next 5 years, he worked at The Royal Marsden Hospital in London as a Clinical Research Fellow in the Renal and Melanoma Unit. During this time, he also worked as a Translational Research Scientist at The Francis Crick Institute.
While abroad, Lewis obtained a doctoral degree (PhD) on Cancer Genomics and Tumour Immunology through the Institute of Cancer Research. His work focused on predictive biomarkers of immunotherapy treatment response in patients with clear cell renal cell carcinoma (kidney cancer), through in-depth analyses of patient tumour samples obtained from clinical trials.
In 2020, he co-established and conducted the CAPTURE study, which became the largest study globally to prospectively evaluate the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 vaccines in patients with cancer. His research has led to multiple high-impact co-first author scientific publications including in The Lancet, Nature Medicine, Nature Cancer, and Cancer Cell.
He is the recipient of the 2019 Cecile and Ken Youner IKCC Scholarship and the 2022 Chairman’s Prize for outstanding PhD thesis by the Institute of Cancer Research. For his discovery of the link between anti-PD-1 treatment response and intratumoural T cell receptor sequences in kidney cancer he was awarded the Best Fundamental Research Prize by the European Association of Urology in 2023.
He is a ESMO Faculty Member of Translational Research for 2022-2026.
Qualifications
FRACP, MBBS, BMedSci, PhD
Publications
- Au L, Larkin J, Turajlic S. Relatlimab and nivolumab in the treatment of melanoma. Cell 2022 Dec;185(26):4866-4869.
- Au L, Hatipoglu E, Massy M, Litchfield K, Beatie G, Rowan A et al. Determinants of anti-PD-1 response and resistance in clear cell renal cell carcinoma. Cancer Cell 2021 DOI 10.1016/j.ccell.2021.10.001
- Au L, Fender A et al. Cytokine release syndrome in a patient with colorectal cancer following vaccination with BNT162b2. Nature Medicine 2021 Aug;27:1362-1366.
- Au L, Boos L et al. Cancer, COVID-19, and antiviral immunity: the CAPTURE study. Cell 2020 183(1): p. 4-10.
- Fendler A, Shepherd S, Au L, Wu M, Harvey R et al. Omicron neutralising antibodies in patients with cancer after third COVID-19 vaccine dose. The Lancet 2022 DOI 10.1016/PII
- Fendler A, Au L, Shepherd S et al. Functional antibody and T-cell immunity following SARS-CoV-2 infection, including by variants of concern, in patients with cancer: the CAPTURE study. Nature Cancer 2021 DOI 10.1038/s43018-021-00275-9
- Fendler A, Shepherd S, Au L, Wilkinson K, Wu M et al. Adaptive immunity and neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern following vaccination in patients with cancer: The CAPTURE study. Nature Cancer 2021 DOI 10.1038/s43018-021-00274-w
- Fendler A, Shepherd S, Au L, Wilkinson K, Wu M et al. Immune responses following third COVID-19 vaccination are reduced in patients with hematological malignancies compared to patients with solid cancer. Cancer Cell 2021 DOI 10.1016/j.ccell.2021.12.013
- Fernández Sanromán A, Joshi, K, Au L, et al TCR-sequencing: application in immune-oncology research. Immuno-Oncology and Technology 2023 DOI 10.1016/j.iotech.2023.100373
- Turajlic S, Xu H, Litchfield K, Rowan A, Chambers T, Lopez J, Nicol D, O’Brien T, Larkin J, Horswell S, Stares M, Au L (and 37 other co-authors). Tracking renal cancer evolution reveals constrained routes to metastases: TRACERx Renal study. Cell 2018 Apr 19;173(3):581-594
