MECHANISMS OF RESISTANCE TO MENIN INHIBITOR THERAPY AND ACUTE MYELOID LEUKAEMIA
With
Dr Rithin Nedumannil,
Consultant Haematologist and PhD Candidate,
Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre,
Austin Health,
Eastern Health,
Royal Melbourne Hospital
Melbourne, Australia
RESEARCHER PROFILE
Filmed in Melbourne, Australia | June 2025
Dr Rithin Nedumannil (MBBS, MPH, FRACP, FRCPA) is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne, undertaking his doctoral studies in collaboration with the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute (Cambridge, UK) and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre (Melbourne, Australia). He is a clinical haematologist and haematopathologist with current appointments at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, the Royal Melbourne Hospital, Austin Health and Northern Health.
After completing his medical degree at the University of Adelaide, Dr Nedumannil undertook advanced training in clinical and laboratory haematology across Melbourne’s major tertiary centres. He was awarded dual fellowships (FRACP and FRCPA) and went on to complete a subspecialty fellowship in Acute Leukaemia and Myelodysplastic Syndromes at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and the Royal Melbourne Hospital in 2024. He also holds a Master of Public Health from the University of New South Wales.
His interest in translational leukaemia research has been shaped by extensive clinical experience and academic work focusing on measurable residual disease, novel fusion genes and treatment resistance in acute leukaemias. His PhD will explore resistance mechanisms to menin inhibitors in acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) using genome-scale technologies including CRISPR screening, RNA sequencing and epigenomic profiling. His research will be conducted over two years at the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute and one year at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.
For this work, Dr Nedumannil has been awarded the 2025 Haematology Society of Australia and New Zealand and Leukaemia Foundation New Investigator PhD Scholarship, supporting his goal of translating molecular insights into improved therapeutic strategies for high-risk AML.
Source: Supplied
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0883-3942
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Touched by bowel cancer and chasing science outcomes
Dr Josephine Wright is a Senior Research Fellow in the Gut Cancer group. She has been developing a translational network of labs, hospitals and clinics to enable validation of new approaches to prevent and treat colorectal and gastric cancer. Her key focus is studying human tumour organoids to better personalise therapy in cancer.
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Biostatistics in Clinical Trials
As a biostatistician working in research and clinical settings, Kate Francis plays a vital role in ensuring all projects adhere to best practice guidelines and are transparently reported. She has served as the lead statistician for the analysis of clinical trials across a broad range of subject areas, including neonatal resuscitation, BCG for allergy and infection, convulsive status epilepticus and her work has been published in the top journals such as The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and The Lancet. Most recently she was awarded the 2025 Excellence in Trial Statistics Award for her work on the PLUSS trial.
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Stem cells used for age-related macular degeneration
Dr. Jenna Hall is a passionate and accomplished biologist with expertise in induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) culture, disease modelling, and high-throughput automated systems. She recently earned her PhD from the University of Melbourne, where her research focused on using iPSC-derived retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cells to study age-related macular degeneration. Dr Hall’s technical skillset spans manual and automated cell reprogramming and differentiation, quantitative microscopy-based phenotyping, and large scale -omics analysis.
