Anthony Gill- Chairman

Anthony is Professor of Surgical Pathology at the University of Sydney and current chairman of the APGI.  He graduated in medicine from the University of Sydney in 1997 with the Harry J Clayton Memorial Prize for first in university in Medicine and Clinical Medicine; the Hinder Memorial Prize for first in the university in Surgery and Clinical Surgery; the Robert Scot Skirving Memorial Prize for first in the university in Medicine and Surgery and the Royal North Shore Hospital Medal. He completed his specialty training in surgical pathology (FRCPA) in 2005 and since then has divided his time between diagnostic pathology as a senior staff specialist at Royal North Shore Hospital and medical research. His research has concentrated on translating advances made in the understanding of cancer at the basic science or molecular level into diagnostic tests which can be applied in the routine surgical pathology laboratory on patient biopsy specimens. He was awarded the prestigious Benjamin Castleman award in 2011 by the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology (USCAP) as well as the John Loewenthal Medal and a higher doctorate by publication (MD) from the University of Sydney in 2011; the NSW Premier’s Award for Excellence in Translational Cancer Research in 2013 and the Sir Zelman Cowen Universities Prize for discovery in Medical Research in 2014.

Sean Grimmond

The Bertalli Chair in Cancer Medicine, University of Melbourne Centre for Cancer Research, Sean obtained his PhD in pathology from the University of Queensland.  He is a founding scientific fellow in The Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia.  Previous appointments include the chair of medical genomics at the University of Glasgow, co-director of the Scottish Genomes Partnership, a professor of genetics at the University of Queensland, and founding director of the Queensland Centre for Medical Genomics.  Over the past 8 years, Sean has pioneered whole-genome and transcriptome analysis of cancer patients, co-led Australia’s International Cancer Genome Consortium efforts into pancreatic, neuroendocrine and ovarian cancer, and contributed cohort-based mutational landscape studies in melanoma and oesophageal cancer.  His current research is firmly focused on real-time omic anlaysis of recalcitrant cancers, testing the value of personalised therapies, and further cancer genome discovery.

Nik Zeps

Dr. Zeps is a PhD scientist involved in translational research in breast, gastrointestinal and gynecological malignancies. He is the Director of Research at SJG HealthCare and head of a translational research program that has established a biobank and clinical registry as a part of routine multidisciplinary cancer care. He is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Health Sciences at Curtin University, the Centre for Comparative Genomics at Murdoch University and at Notre Dame Medical School. He is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Surgery and the School of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Western Australia. He was a member of the Australian Health Ethics Committee from 2006-2012 and the Research Committee of the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) of Australia from 2009-2015. He is the chair of the Cancer Biology Group of the Clinical Oncology Society of Australia and a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Australasian Gastro-intestinal Trials Group and of the Primary Care Cancer Collaborative Trials Group Executive committee.

He is the Australian representative on the Ethics and Policy Committee of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) and was recently appointed Co-Chair of the Communication Committee of the ICGC-Precision Medicine initiative. He is a member of the Accountability Working Group of the Global Alliance for Genomic Health (GA4GH). He was the Australian member of the Steering Committee for the Global Summit of National Ethics Committees (WHO/UNESCO) from 2010-2016.

Paul Timpson

Paul is Laboratory Head of the Garvan’s Invasion and Metastasis group, focusing specifically on imaging live pancreatic tumour behavior in the context of disease progression and improving drug targeting. This live imaging work has now been correlated to TMA patient biopsy data from the APGI cohort helping translation of the groups’ findings.

In the laboratory Paul’s group use novel state-of-the-art intravital imaging approaches and new fluorescent biosensor mouse models to uncouple the metastatic process into key stages in order to pinpoint critical events that drive tumour invasion and metastasis. “Our approach permits real-time imaging ranging from whole body tumour progression to single-cell invasion events, and helps us to understand how tumour cell (a) dissociation (b) invasion and (c) progression are controlled and how this is linked to the development of invasive or metastatic cancer.”