The $30,000 Roche Translational Research Fellowship will support her work, which was aimed at improving treatment outcomes for patients with bowel cancer, also known as colorectal cancer.
Bowel cancer accounts for 8.5% of cancer-related deaths worldwide. Each year, about 1200 New Zealanders die from bowel cancer — similar to breast and prostate cancer combined. The incidence of bowel cancer in New Zealand is one of the highest in the developed world, and survival rates are worse than in Australia.
Dr Kemp is a senior lecturer in the Otago microbiology and immunology department. Her award success was announced at the recent New Zealand Society for Oncology annual conference in Palmerston North.
Dr Kemp said her research aimed to "deliver a direct clinical benefit to cancer patients" and the award "brings us much closer to that goal".
The immune response had been identified as a key predictive factor for bowel cancer survival, but the immune response within the tumour was "incredibly complex". Researchers needed to understand the cells and mechanisms involved to develop new therapies.
Otago researchers were using mass cytometry, a new technique in this country, to probe the immune response within the tumour, and to identify those patients likely to best respond to existing immune therapies, she said.