Guest Speakers
Andrew Biankin
Professor Andrew Biankin is the Head of the Pancreatic Cancer Research Group at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney and is a practising Consultant Hepatobiliary & Upper GI Surgeon with the Sydney South West Area Health Service.
Together with Professor Sean Grimmond (profiled below), he heads the Australian Pancreatic Cancer Genome Initiative (APGI), which is Australia's official project arm of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC).
In recognition of his innovative and ground-breaking work in pancreatic cancer research, Professor Biankin has received numerous awards, including the Landon-AACR INNOVATOR Award for International Collaboration in Cancer Research (2010), and Cancer Institute NSW Premier's Award for Outstanding Cancer Research Fellow (2007).
Warwick Anderson
Professor Warwick Anderson is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of NHMRC, Australia’s major governmental funding body for health and medical research. Previously, he was Head of School of Biomedical Sciences at Monash University and Deputy Director of the Baker Medical Research Institute, following research fellowships at the University of Sydney and Harvard Medical School.
Professor Anderson obtained his PhD from the University of Adelaide, South Australia. His research has focussed on renal mechanisms in the pathogenesis of hypertension, including the roles of renal vascular remodelling and the renin-angiotensin system. He has published over 170 peer review articles. For his contributions to medical research, Professor Anderson was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 2005.
Sean Grimmond
Professor Sean Grimmond is the Director of the Queensland Centre for Medical Genomics, located at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, The University of Queensland, Australia.
His research over the last decade has focused on defining the molecular networks controlling biological processes and pathological states through genome-wide surveying of sequence content, transcriptome complexity and epigenomic signatures.
Professor Grimmond's scientific achievements include the pioneering of array-based and sequence-based technologies, the functional annotation of mammalian transcriptomes and the study of transcriptional programs in cancer and urogenital development.
Richard Gibbs
Dr. Richard Gibbs is the Director of the Human Genome Sequencing Center at Baylor College of Medicine. He received a B.Sc. in 1979 and a Ph.D. in Genetics and Radiation Biology in 1986 at the University of Melbourne in Australia.
Dr Gibbs moved to Houston as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) to study the molecular basis of human X-linked diseases and to develop technologies for rapid genetic analysis. During this period, he developed several fundamental technologies for nucleic acid analysis. In 1991, he joined the faculty at BCM and played a key role in the early planning and development phases of the human genome project.
In 1996, he established the Human Genome Sequencing Center when Baylor was chosen as one of six programs to complete the final phase of the human genome project. He currently holds the rank of Director and Professor.
John McPherson
Dr. McPherson was Co-Director of the Washington University Genome Sequencing Center during the Human Genome Project (1996-2003) where he played a key role in developing large-scale mapping and sequencing methodologies. He was the lead author on the human genome physical map.
As the Genome Centers took on a wide variety of genomes spanning the Tree of Life, he chose to remain closer to his human genetics roots and accepted an offer to join the Human Genome Sequencing Center at the Baylor College of Medicine (2003-2007). There he established a high-throughput resequencing pipeline which was used to examine lung adenocarcinomas and glioblastomas as part of trans Genome Center collaborations, the Tumor Sequencing Project and the Cancer Genome Atlas, respectively. These projects laid the groundwork for further large-scale efforts at utilizing high-throughput genomic technologies to unravel cancer genomes.
Recently, Dr. McPherson joined the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR) as Director, Cancer Genomics (July 2007). In the time since relocating to OICR, he has assembled and trained a team and established a large next-generation sequencing platform. The OICR is one of the founder members of the International Cancer Genome Consortium and Dr. McPherson is leading the OICR effort to sequence 350 pancreatic adenocarcimomas and matched normal DNA. He has recently entered into collaborations with Toronto Clinician Scientists to bring these sequencing technologies to the clinical environment.
Nam Nguyen
Dr Nguyen is an interventional gastroenterologist who has many research interests. He has established a NHMRC funded research program examining physiological mechanisms underlying weight loss induced by different types of bariatric surgery, including the role and distribution of nutrient sensing in obesity and after bariatric surgery.
During Dr Nguyen's fellowship years, he spent 2 years at the Garvan Institute (Sydney) and California Pacific Medical Centre (San Francisco) to work on various aspects in the diagnosis, biomarkers and management of pancreatic cancer. This work continues as he took the Staff Specialist position at the Royal Adelaide in 2008.
Dr Nguyen is a member of APGI and has a special interest in EUS-guided techniques to acquire pre-operative tissue for evaluation of prognostic biomarkers, which may provide a non-invasive approach for individualizing therapy of pancreatic cancer. He has published 62 peer-reviewed papers and 9 book chapters, the majority as first author, with an h-index of 16.
Jack Goldblatt
Clinical Professor Goldblatt is the Director of Genetic Services and the Familial Cancer Program of Western Australia. He has co-authored 203 publications on diverse aspects of human genetics, including clinical, biochemical, molecular genetic, educational, ethical and epidemiological research on inherited factors in individuals, families and populations, including 31 articles on various aspects of inherited cancer syndromes.
Professor Goldblatt's research interests include aspects of the genetics of cancer, asthma, the immune system, vaccine responses, infertility and delineation of rare genetic syndromes. Over the last ten years he has jointly received 16 competitive research grants, including 6 from the National Health & Medical Research Council of Australia (NHMRC).
In June 2011, Professor Goldblatt was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia in recognition of his service to medicine in the area of human genetics as a clinician and researcher and to professional associations.
Nik Zeps
Dr Zeps is a member of the Ethics and Policy Committee of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC). He is also a member of the Australian Health Ethics Committee (AHEC) of the NHMRC, chair of the Biological Research Committee of the Australasian Gastro-intestinal Trials Group (AGITG), Chair of the Research Group of the Clinical Oncological Society of Australia and Chair of the National Research Advisory Group of Cancer Australia.
Dr Zeps is employed by St John of God Pathology and Radiation Oncology, Sir Charles Gairdner hospital. He is an Adjunct Associate Professor in both the school of Surgery and School of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at UWA, and at Notre Dame Medical School.
Dr Zeps will be discussing current Australian regulations and ethical guidelines regarding the collection of human biospecimens and the research that is done on them. There will be a focus on how to manage information arising from such research available to a research participant or a related family member if it is relevant to their health. This is particularly important for projects such as the ICGC which will inevitably generate such data.
