McCaughan Laboratory

The McCaughan Lab uses advanced immune‑profiling technologies to uncover how different cells interact inside liver cancers. Through cutting‑edge immune mass cytometry, the team has identified a previously unknown micro‑environment within tumours — a specialised niche made up of blood‑vessel cells, perivascular macrophages, other myeloid cells and T cells.

The lab is also investigating how immune cells in the blood, healthy liver tissue and tumour tissue differ in people with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Using powerful single‑cell techniques, they can examine individual cells to understand how each one behaves and contributes to disease.

Next, the team will map how these cells communicate and influence tumour development using spatial transcriptomics, imaging mass cytometry and single‑cell sequencing. These approaches allow them to see not only what cells are present, but where they are located within the tumour and how they interact.

To support this work, the McCaughan Lab has developed several mouse models of liver cancer, including a new intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (iCCA) model that closely mirrors the human disease. These models have already helped identify promising new therapeutic targets.

The McCaughan Lab will also play a key role in a major new national research program funded by the Snow Medical Research Foundation. This $15.5 million initiative brings together leading researchers across Australia to tackle fatty liver disease — a condition affecting up to one in three Australians — with the Centenary Institute contributing essential expertise in liver immunology, inflammation and disease mechanisms.