Associate Professor Burr completed a PhD in immunology at the University of Cambridge in 2014, where she identified novel cellular quality control pathways regulating MHC class I antigen presentation. Clinical specialty training in anatomical pathology inspired her to apply this expertise to tackle the problem of immune evasion in cancer. Supported by a prestigious Cancer Research UK Clinician Scientist Fellowship, she established a highly productive research program in Cambridge and subsequently at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, making fundamental biological discoveries that hold great promise for the development of novel cancer immunotherapies. In 2017, her team identified the previously uncharacterised protein CMTM6 to be a binding partner and regulator of PD-L1 in cancer cells (Burr et al, Nature 2017), a landmark discovery that has opened a new field of research and led to the establishment of drug-discovery programs in Australia and world-wide to develop immunotherapies targeting the CMTM6-PD-L1 interaction. Her recent work has identified distinct epigenetic repressive complexes silencing MHC class I antigen presentation in cancer cells (Burr et al, Cancer Cell 2019), uncovering new opportunities for the targeted use of epigenetic inhibitors to improve anti-tumour immune responses in a number of aggressive, difficult to treat malignancies such as neuroblastoma and lung cancer.