Associate Professor Richard Lake is the Chief Investigator on the NCARD grant responsible for developing a National Mouse model for Mesothelioma. The primary objective of this project is the establishment of a central resource to maintain and distribute cell lines.

A/Prof Lake is a non-clinical scientist with the Tumour Immunology Group, which he established with Professor Bruce Robinson and Dr Bernadette Scott in 1995. He has had a long-standing interest in Malignant Mesothelioma, both in terms of immunotherapy and molecular events in initiation and progression, and the use of mesothelin as an early marker of disease. He is currently involved in mesothelin profiling of Western Australian malignant mesothelioma samples, including those from the Wittenoom cohort.
The focus of work A/Prof Lake’s work over the last 10 years has been in the area of tumour immunology and mesothelioma. He has cloned several novel tumour antigens in the search for a vaccine that might prevent asbestos-induced cancer; made a number of key discoveries in tumour immunology regarding host anti-tumour response and developed the concept of combination chemotherapy and immunotherapy with regard to the role of tumour antigen cross-presentation.
A/Prof Lake has also published more than 50 original research papers. Recent invited review articles have been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Nature Cancer Reviews and Lancet. He supervises both Honours and PhD students.

He is also a founding member of the Perth Mesothelioma Centre, a committee member of the AMATA & the National DNA Array Network, as well as a member of the National Asbestos Working Party, an organization formed under the auspices of the NHMRC to develop a national approach to the organization of research into asbestos-related diseases. In addition he is a member of the British Society for Immunology, the Australian Society of Immunology and the International Mesothelioma Interest Group.