2025 Klempfner Snowdome Fellowship Announcement

Snowdome is delighted to announce the 2025 Klempfner Snowdome Fellowship, led by Prof. Mark Dawson at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.

The fellowship will drive research to develop new strategies for more effective Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy. This therapy works by reprogramming a patient’s T cells (a type of immune cell) to target and kill cancer cells with unparalleled precision.

Over the last decade, CAR T-cell therapy has continued to revolutionise blood cancer treatments. Although 80 per cent of patients receiving CAR T-cell therapy achieve remission, more than 50 per cent of these patients will ultimately relapse. This emphasises the urgent need to improve this cellular therapy to ensure every Australian blood cancer patient has the best opportunity for a cure.

The 2025 Klempfner Snowdome Fellowship addresses a key challenge in CAR T-cell therapy. T cells retrieved from patients to manufacture CAR T products are often impaired by the patient’s prior treatments including chemotherapy and radiotherapy, which can lead to CAR T-cell therapy failure.

Prof. Dawson will mentor two clinician-scientists, Dr Phillip Nguyen and Dr Tessa Potenzy, whose research will develop strategies to generate CAR T-cells from blood stem cells that freshly produce T-cells in the patient. This circumvents the use of impaired T-cells and instead offers a diverse, non-compromised population of functional T-cells. This involves developing the ability to expand blood stem cells and engineer them into more effective anti-cancer cellular therapies.

Dr George Klempfner and Dr Yolanda Klempfner AO initially met Prof. Mark Dawson in 2006, before reconnecting with him in 2014 and learning about his remarkable impact on blood cancer research. They subsequently started funding his research through the Snowdome Foundation. Prof. Dawson said, “the enduring support of George and Yolanda Klempfner has underpinned the training and career development of several amazing clinician-scientists. It is a huge privilege that they have entrusted to the Dawson Lab and I am so very grateful for their support.”

Snowdome Foundation Chief Executive, Kirstee Macbeth, said, “this fellowship will be the sixth research project supported by the Klempfner family. Since 2015, their generous support has enabled research into a diagnostic tool called ctDNA for myelodysplastic syndromes, a clinical trial for a new blood cancer targeted therapy, and projects to improve the success rates of bone marrow transplants and CAR T-cell therapy. The collaboration is a perfect showcase of the powerful connection Snowdome creates between visionary philanthropic donors and Australia’s brightest research minds.”

Together with the Klempfner family, the Snowdome Foundation is proud to support this pioneering work; the first of its kind, with the potential for profound and far-reaching impact.