Tongan wins recognition for cancer vaccine research [1]
Thursday, August 21, 2008 - 17:08. Updated on Thursday, September 11, 2014 - 16:26.
Dianne Sika-Paotonu, a Tongan PhD student in New Zealand has won a top health research award for her work on finding a cure for cancer.
Her cancer vaccine research was recognized in this year's MacDiarmid Young Scientists of the Year Awards when Dianne won the Advancing Human Health and Wellbeing category and a cash prize of $5,000 on August 15 in Wellington, New Zealand.
The award was sponsored by the Health Research Council of New Zealand. 


Dianne is working at the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research as part of her PhD studies and researching potent new vaccines that may be able to activate a patient's immune cells to destroy cancer tissue.
Dianne's research centres on dendritic cells, which are a rare group of immune cells in the human body responsible for initiating immune responses. When functioning properly, dendritic cells can activate T-cells, considered the foot soldiers of immune response, to destroy cancer tissue.
Dendritic cells in a cancer patient often don't work as they should. A therapeutic cancer vaccine is made by loading properly functioning dendritic cells with tumour fragments and injecting them back into the body. Although this prompts T-cells to become cancer fighters, this treatment is not yet powerful enough to act as a frontline cancer therapy.
Breakthrough Strategies
Dianne's breakthrough strategies involve coating the dendritic cells with a sea sponge extract (alpha-galactosylceramide), which causes the dendritic cells to work harder at turning the T-cells into cancer killers, promoting a more potent tumour-killing response than cancer vaccines currently being trialed. The research is helping Dianne keep a promise she made as an eight year old to find a cure for cancer after a close family friend died of the disease.
Dianne is the daughter of Tevita Sika and Teisa Latu who emigrated from Tonga and settled in Wellington in 1973. Dianne was born in Wellington and attended Wellington Girls' College, then worked at Wellington Hospital, and studied through AUT for anaesthetic technician qualifications before completing a Masters in Biomedical Science (Hons) at Victoria University of Wellington.
The runner up in the Advancing Human Health and Wellbeing category is Hae Joo Kang, from the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Auckland for her research into drug therapies against the disease-causing Streptococcus bacteria.