Dr Paniz Tavakoli

Paniz Tavakoli Shirazi received her PhD from the University of Adelaide and the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI) in 2021, where she focused on the leukaemogenicity, drug resistance, and therapeutic targeting of novel tyrosine kinase TYK2 alterations in Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia.  

Following her PhD, Paniz joined Professor Lane’s Laboratory (Gordon & Jessie Gilmour Leukaemia Research Laboratory) at QIMR-Berghofer as a postdoctoral researcher, where she investigates the impact of combinatorial genetic mutations on disease progression and therapy response in Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML).

Paniz was awarded the Cancer Australia Priority-driven Collaborative Cancer Research Scheme (PdCCRS) grant in 2023. She currently leads studies investigating how specific genetic mutations in NPM1-mutated AML affect chemotherapy response and contribute to therapy resistance in leukaemia stem cells, using both in vitro and in vivogenetic models. Additionally, she is working to identify vulnerabilities in leukaemia stem cells and develop novel strategies to effectively eliminate them, with the goal of improving patient treatment outcomes.