Areas of interest

Childhood cancer Pancreatic cancer Sarcoma

Research group

Translational Antigen Discovery

Biography

Associate Professor Pouya Faridi is a tumour immunologist and mass spectrometrist whose research focuses on discovering and validating tumour antigens for the development of precision cancer immunotherapies. He is Head of the Translational Antigen Discovery Laboratory at the Hudson Institute of Medical Research, an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine at Monash University, Co-Director of the Monash Proteomics and Metabolomics Platform, and Founder and Director of the Monash Clinical Proteomics Node.

His laboratory develops and applies advanced mass spectrometry, immunopeptidomics and multi-omics technologies to identify actionable antigens in childhood and adult cancers. A major focus of his work is the discovery of tumour-specific, non-canonical and non-classical HLA-associated antigens, including peptides presented by HLA-E and HLA-G, and their translation into vaccines, T-cell receptor therapies, peptide-targeted cell therapies and other precision immunotherapeutic approaches.

Associate Professor Faridi has made internationally recognised contributions to immunopeptidomics and antigen discovery. His work has advanced the identification of non-canonical antigens, particularly proteasome-generated spliced peptides, and contributed to the translation of these discoveries into a first-in-human clinical study of a spliced-peptide cancer vaccine. His group is also developing technologies for low-input, spatial, quantitative and clinical immunopeptidomics, with applications in diffuse midline glioma, Ewing sarcoma, osteosarcoma, pancreatic cancer and other difficult-to-treat malignancies.

He has published more than 80 peer-reviewed papers in leading journals, including Cell, Science Immunology, Nature, Nature Communications, the Journal of Clinical Investigation, PNAS and Cancer Immunology Research. He is Co-Chair of the Human Immuno-Peptidome Project, an international initiative of the Human Proteome Organization.

Associate Professor Faridi has attracted more than $25 million in collaborative research and infrastructure funding over the past five years from Australian and international government agencies, philanthropic organisations and industry partners. His research has been supported by organisations including the Medical Research Future Fund, National Health and Medical Research Council, Victorian Cancer Agency, Cancer Australia, US Department of Defense, PanKind, Team Cade and the Isabella and Marcus Foundation.