Associate Professor Michelle Wykes is Group Leader of the Molecular Immunology Laboratory at the QIMR Berghofer, in Brisbane. She is an expert on “immune checkpoints” which are the basis for a new type of cancer treatment known as “immunotherapy”. Her research in “immune checkpoints” started when she was looking for the reason Plasmodium spp, which cause malaria, could evade immunity. Her group published a paradigm–shifting study which showed Programmed cell death-1 ligand 2 was essential for immunity. This line of research, published in Immunity, Journal of Clinical Oncology and Nature Reviews Immunology, has led to several patents, funding and awards to develop novel treatments for cancer and autoimmunity. Notably, in 2023, she was awarded a US Department of Defense grant for breast cancer. She is Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Fovero Therapeutics, which is developing a novel Immunotherapy for MSS colon cancer.