Mr John Kokkinos

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John is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow developing new therapeutic strategies for pancreatic cancer at UNSW Sydney. He is supervised by Professor Phoebe Phillips in the Lowy Cancer Research Centre. John completed his PhD in 2022 at UNSW, entitled: 'Reprogramming Pancreatic Cancer Cells to Surrender to Microenvironmental Death Signals'. His PhD was supported by the highly prestigious UNSW Scientia PhD Scholarship and won multiple awards including Winner of the 2019 UNSW 3-Minute Thesis Competition, and has presented his work in several high impact publications and at national and international conferences. John was awarded a grant from Tour de Cure where he established and characterised a world-first model of growing human pancreatic tumours in the lab.

University role:

Research Associate

Awards:

Outstanding Contribution to Research Award, Faculty of Medicine & Health UNSW
Young Investigator Award, American Pancreatic Association
Outstanding Achievement in Research Award, Australian Society for Medical Research
Winner at UNSW 3-Minute Thesis Final 2019
Health & Medical Research Early Career Award – Open Junior Division, Tow Coast Association
Bioscience Reports Best Poster Award, Avner Pancreatic Cancer Foundation
Tour de Cure PhD Support Scholarship
UNSW Scientia PhD Scholarship
Shortlisted by UNSW for CSL Florey Next Generation Award

Keywords:

pancreatic cancer

nanomedicine

tumour-stroma interactions

rna interference

Research

Research activities:

Pancreatic cancer is the deadliest of all major cancers. A major driver of the aggressive nature of this hideous disease is the dense fibrotic scar tissue surrounding pancreatic tumours which acts like a fortress to protect and support the tumour. John's PhD developed an innovative method to grow whole pieces of human pancreatic tumours in the lab, thus mimicking the tumour and its surrounding 'fortress'. Down the track, this breakthrough will allow researchers to test chemotherapy drugs on each patient's individual tumour to inform personalised treatment for pancreatic cancer. Our multidisciplinary team is also developing a state-of-the-art nanomedicine to break through the tumour 'fortress' and deliver death signals to pancreatic cancer cells.

Media

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-kokkinos-a61798117/

Publications related to this Person

Journal articles

Preprints

Sharbeen G; McCarroll JA; Akerman A; Kopecky C; Youkhana J; Holst J; Boyer C; Erkan M; Goldstein D; Timpson P; Cox TR; Pereira BA; Chitty JL; Fey S; Najumudeen AK; Campbell AD; Sansom OJ; Ignacio RMC; Naim S; Liu J; Russia N; Lee J; Chou A; Johns A; Gill A; Gonzales-Aloy E; Kokkinos J; Gebski V; Turner N; Apte M; Davis TP; Morton JP; Haghighi K; Phillips PA, Cancer-associated fibroblasts in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma determine response to SLC7A11 inhibition, http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.12.199638