Gavin Painter, Professor of Victoria University of Wellington, Lower Hutt, New Zealand. Professor Gavin Painter is developing new treatments for cancer that harness the body’s own immune system to fight the disease. This cancer immunotherapy work is part of an ongoing collaboration with immunologists at the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research.Unlike chemotherapeutic agents that target malignant tissue directly, cancer vaccines target the immune system. They are well tolerated by the body and have fewer side effects than traditional treatments.“The vaccines kick-start the immune system, which sends its own cells to kill the malignant tissue. “To increase vaccine specificity and potency we are using leading edge conjugation and linker strategies to make new classes of synthetic vaccines that target the vaccine components to specialised immune cells.”Gavin collaborates with synthetic chemists, pharmacologists, immunologists and clinicians from Otago, Victoria and Auckland universities and Capital & Coast District Health Board. He looks forward to seeing the New Zealand-based research commercialised in this country.