Prof Lee Wong from Monash University’s Biomedicine Discovery Institute (BDI) is a cancer and chromatin researcher working to understand the fundamental changes that drive aggressive childhood and young adult brain cancers, and how these discoveries can lead to new treatments. Her research has a particular focus on diffuse midline glioma (DMG), a devastating childhood brain cancer for which effective treatment options remain extremely limited.
Prof Wong studies chromatin, how DNA is packaged and organised inside our cells, and how changes to this organisation can drive cancer. Her research has shown that these changes can create a barrier that keeps DMG cells in an immature, aggressive state rather than allowing them to develop into more mature cells. Her team is working to understand how this barrier forms and, importantly, how it can be overcome to make these cancer cells more responsive to treatment. Her broader research explores how cancer cells maintain and protect their DNA and control their growth, with the aim of uncovering new weaknesses that can be targeted therapeutically.
Her research brings together fundamental biology, genomics, cellular imaging, computational approaches and precision medicine. She is a Chief Investigator on an MRFF-funded program developing new approaches for paediatric brain cancer and is committed to mentoring the next generation of brain cancer researchers.
Through the CoLab funding opportunity, Prof Wong will work with her co-investigators and collaborators to understand the proteins that create and maintain this barrier in DMG. By bringing together expertise in chromatin biology, structural biology and drug discovery, the team aims to find new ways to selectively target these proteins, release the barrier and encourage DMG cells to become more mature and less aggressive. This could open the possibility of a new differentiation therapy approach, providing a new way to make these currently incurable brain cancers more responsive to treatment.
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