Dr Rebecca Simpson is a Cancer Institute NSW Early Career Fellow. Rebecca completed her PhD with the Melanoma Institute Australia at the University of Sydney under the supervision Prof Georgina Long and Dr Erin Shanahan in 2024. Her research focuses on the role of diet and the gut microbiome during immune checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy.  Specifically, how microbiome-immune cross talk shapes anti-tumour immune responses and the development of immune mediated toxicities, with the goal of identifying novel strategies that target this axis to enhance the efficacy and safety of treatment. 

Rebecca leads microbiome analyses at the Melanoma Institute Australia including for multiple highly influential neo-adjuvant clinical trials in collaboration with the Netherlands Cancer Institute. Her PhD research involved a longitudinal analysis of samples (microbiome & PBMCs) from the first Australian and one of the largest most clinically homogenous prospective microbiome patient cohorts worldwide, as well as complementary mechanistic studies in mice which utilise diet to modulate the gut microbiota. Her current research continues to employ both the analysis of human biospecimens and pre-clinical mouse models. 

Rebecca’s research has been published in multiple prestigious journals including Nature Medicine, Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology and Cancer Cell. She has given oral presentations at numerous national and international conferences including the AACR Annual Meeting, ESMO Congress, SMR Congress and ASI Annual Meeting. In recognition of her research, she has also received a number of awards including an AACR Scholar In Training Award, an EMSO Merit Award and most notably the Rising Star PhD Candidate Award at the NSW Premier’s Awards for Outstanding Cancer Research in 2023.