Dr. Jazmina Gonzalez Cruz

Dr Jazmina L. Gonzalez Cruz completed her Bachelor of Science with honours at the University of La Laguna in 2006 (Spain). In 2006, she undertook Ph.D. studies on the innate immune evasion strategies of RNA viruses at the National Centre of Biotechnology (CNB), receiving her doctorate with honours in 2011 (Spain). In 2013, Dr. Cruz began a post-doctoral position, with grant support of Bayer and the Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation, to study the role of monocyte derived dendritic cells at the portal of entry of Influenza and Rift Valley viruses at the Henrich Pette Institute (Germany).

In 2015, she joined the Wells Group at The University of Queensland Diamantina Institute, were she was awarded with a 3-year UQ early career fellowship. Her research was focused on the development of novel immunotherapies/vaccines for virally associated cancers by regulating the function of cytotoxic T-cells. Currently, under the supervision of Professor Ian Frazer, Dr. Cruz has established a strong collaboration with the Technological University of Denmark to develop a pipeline to de-risk the design and manufacture of personalized cancer immunotherapies. Her group will be the first in Australia to apply large-scale DNA barcode-labelled multimers and single cell sequencing to identify anti-tumour T-cells in patients with HPV16^+/- Oropharyngeal Squamous Cell carcinoma (OPSCC), and test the efficacy of novel patient-specific vaccines containing tumour antigens known to mount an anti-tumour response.

External links:

• UQ Profile