Tues 22nd October, 3pm

Bio

Steven Lane is a clinical haematologist and translational researcher, based out of the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital and QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute. His clinical work focuses on understanding molecular drivers of cancer and targeted therapies. He is the Director of Clincial Research in Cancer Care at RBWH, and principal investigator on a number of national cooperative trials. Additionally, Steven is the Head of the Cancer Program at QIMR Berghofer, and lab head of the Gordon and Jessie Gilmour Leukaemia Research Lab. His lab has been supported by the CSL Centenary Fellowship, NHMRC, Leukaemia Foundation, Cancer Australia and philanthropic donations.

Tues 17th September, 3pm

Bio

Brian Wilhelm obtained his Ph.D. in Medical Genetics from UBC in the Terry Fox Laboratory in Vancouver, in 2003. He then carried out postdoctoral training at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (Cambridge, U.K.) in the lab of Dr. Jurg Bahler, and then in the lab of Dr. Guy Sauvageau at IRIC.

In 2010, Brian Wilhelm launched his own lab, the Institute’s High-Throughput Genomics Research Unit, and began as a Professor in the Department of Medicine of the Université de Montréal.

Tues 14th May, 11am

Bio

Michael W. Pfaffl started 1986 to study ‘Agriculture - Animal Science’ and ‘Biotechnology’ at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). In 1997 he obtained his PhD in ‘Molecular Physiology’ in the field of molecular muscle and growth physiology at the Chair of Physiology. In June 2003 he completed his Venia Legendi (Dr. habil.) at the Centre of Life and Food Sciences Weihenstephan with the title ‘Livestock transcriptomics -- Quantitative mRNA analytics in molecular endocrinology and mammary gland physiology’.

Early 2010 he became Professor of ‘Molecular Physiology’ at the TUM School of Life Sciences. Today he has reached the ‘Principal Investigator’ status at the Institute of Animal Physiology & Immunology and is one of the leading scientists in the field of Gene Quantification, RT-qPCR technology, RNA sequencing, and complex data analysis in mRNA & small-RNA expression profiling.

He is author of around 180 peer reviewed publications, 45 book chapters, and held more than 230 lectures worldwide. 

In March 2012 the Elsevier SciVerse Scopus Award 2012 was granted to Prof. Michael W. Pfaffl, whose top cited Scopus article entitled "A new mathematical model for relative quantification in real-time RT-PCR" published 2001 in Nucleic Acids Research 29(9) has been cited today more than 21,800 times.  He is coauthor of the Minimum Information for Publication of Quantitative Real-Time PCR Experiments (MIQE) guidelines (2009) and coauthor of the dMIQE guidelines for digital PCR (2013).

Professor Michael W. Pfaffl has editorial involvements as Founding- & Section-Editor in ‘Biomolecular Detection and Quantification’, Editor in ‘Methods’ and ‘International Journal of Oncology’, and Editor-in-Chief of the ‘Gene Quantification’ web portal, the world biggest webpage around qPCR, dPCR and Gene Expression profiling techniques and applications. He is initiator and lead organizer of the qPCR, dPCR & NGS Gene Quantification Event series in Freising Weihenstephan in Germany since 2004 (www.eConferences.de ). 

A new mathematical model for relative quantification in real-time RT-PCR" and "Relative expression software tool (REST©) for group-wise comparison and statistical analysis of relative expression results in real-time PCR." published both in Nucleic Acids Research has been cited today more than 26,400 and 6,750 times, respectively.

Mon 25th March, 12.30pm

Bio

Professor Ruud Delwel obtained his PhD from Erasmus University in the Netherlands, and undertook postdoctoral research at St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital in the United States. He obtained a Fellowship from the Royal Dutch Academy of Science in 1994 and since 2010 has held the position of Professor Molecular Leukemogenesis at the Hematology department of ErasmusMC. In 2015 he was awarded the Dutch Cancer Research (KWO) Prize and in 2017 he received the Jose Carreras Award from the European Haematology Association.

Professor Delwel’s works aims to understand the molecular mechanisms of malignant transformation in AML with particular focus on epigenetic alterations and abnormal gene regulation.

Wed 6th March, 11am

Bio

Professor David Gallego Ortega is Head of School (Acting) of Biomedical Engineering, Director of the Single-Cell Technology Facility and Head of the Functional Genomics laboratory within the Faculty of Engineering and IT at the University of Technology Sydney. He also holds an Honorary Research Fellow position at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research and the Faculty of Medicine at the University of New South Wales Sydney.

Using a combination of in vivo preclinical cancer models and tissue-engineered ex vivo models, David’s research group focuses on the mechanisms of communication between different cellular compartments within the tissue ecosystem. In particular, inflammatory pathways driven by myeloid cells during mammary morphogenesis and metastatic breast cancer.

David’s current research interests include tissue engineering for 3D culture cancer modelling and multimodal single-cell resolution approaches applied to the field of tumour immunology and anti-cancer personalised medicine, including the development of high-resolution methods for cancer diagnosis and prognosis.

Tues 20th February, 11am

Bio

Dr Cedric Tremblay completed his PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology (Medicine) from Université Laval (Canada) in 2008. After a first postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Professor Trang Hoang at Université de Montréal, he joined the Stem Cell Research group led by Professor David Curtis at Monash University (Australia) in 2011.

Dr Tremblay joined the University of Manitoba (Canada) as an assistant professor in Immunology and established his independent research program at the Paul Albrechtsen Research Institute CancerCare Manitoba in 2022. Dr Tremblay also joined the Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba at the start of 2023.  His laboratory utilizes bulk and single-cell multi-omic approaches to investigate the molecular mechanisms that control the fate of normal and malignant hematopoietic stem cells, with a particular focus on pediatric leukemias. 

Wed 25th Oct, 11am

Bio

Frank Speleman is currently holding a full-time professorship at the Ghent University (Belgium). He obtained his PhD in Genetics 1992 at Ghent University where he is supervising the Pediatric Cancer Precision Oncogenomics Lab (https://www.spelemanlab.org/). He is co-founder of the Cancer Research Institute Ghent (CRIG). The lab research focuses on fundamental and translational aspects of pediatric cancer with strong focus on identifying novel drug targets and drug combinations for neuroblastoma. 

Fri 7th July, 11am

Bio

My scientific training, expertise and research interests throughout my career have focused on the role of altered genetic and epigenetic states in disease etiology and outcomes. My doctorate/postdoctoral training focused on the role of genomic imprinting (parent-of-origin epigenetic states) in embryogenesis and congenital disease. Thereafter, my research focus evolved to the study of cancer. A particular focus was the role of constitutional methylation (epimutation) as a new cause for high-risk cancer syndromes and the variable intergenerational inheritance patterns associated with this epigenetic defect.

Wed 5th July, 11am

Bio

The research focus of Robert Haile, Dr.P.H., is in cancer epidemiology and genetic epidemiology. He has been conducting cancer research for over 30 years and has a longstanding interest in cancer disparities and has helped lead a broad spectrum of research in this area, from genetic and molecular studies to behavioral studies.

Tues 13th June, 11am

Abstract (What will Dr Fossat talk about?)

1. The characterisation of the viral and cellular microRNA interactomes during SARS-CoV-2 infection and how these could contribute to COVID-19 (Fossat et al., 2023 - Cell Reports).

2. The development of the brain-pCLAP methodology used to reveal the RNA-binding protein atlas of the mammalian brain and how its perturbation contributes to neurodegeneration (Mullari*, Fossat* et al., just accepted! - Nature Communication).Bio

Nicolas Fossat is a molecular biologist fascinated by the control of gene expression. He obtained his PhD in 2005 from the Ecole Normale Supérieure in France while investigating how transcriptional regulation contributes to brain formation. He moved to the University of Sydney in 2007 where he kept deciphering the gene regulatory network responsible for the development of the head in the lab of Patrick Tam, a pioneer in the field of mouse embryology.

While in Australia, Nicolas also became interested in studying gene expression regulation at the RNA post-transcriptional level. Doing so, he discovered a novel RNA-binding protein essential for Cytidine to Uridine RNA editing in the gut and other organs, a change of paradigm in the field.

In 2017, Nicolas moved to the University of Copenhagen where he fully dived into the RNA World by joining a group specialising in the study of RNA viruses. There, combining his past expertise, implementing many state-of-the-art high-throughput methodologies such as CLIP, pCLAP or SPLASH, and using viruses to perturb regulatory networks, his main goal is to reveal new mechanisms of gene expression regulation focusing on the study of RNA-RNA-protein interactions in the brain and the gut.

Tues 28th March, 12.30pm

Bio

Prof. dr. Tom Taghon has been leading the Taghon Lab since 2012. As principal investigator, his ambitions are to drive the research of human thymocyte development, and to pioneer the study of T lymphocytes in health and disease. Prof. Taghon has over 100 publications, many in high impact journals such as Nature Immunology and Nature Genetics. The work of Prof. Taghon and his team has been cited over 3000 times, which signifies the impact of the research group on the field.

The Taghon Lab focuses on (early) human T cell development and the importance of Notch signalling guiding this process. For this, we study the various aspects defining T cell differentiation by unravelling both genetic and epigenetic features directing transcriptional regulation. In this way, we aim to elucidate the mechanisms that are often perturbed in T-cell related malignancies such as T cell leukemia and primary immune deficiencies.

Thur 16th February, 11am

Bio

Daniel Ho is a Principal Scientist at Novartis, where he’s been for the last 8 years, which classifies him as an industry ‘vet’. After completing his undergraduate studies at Cornell University, he started working in various research laboratories. During this time, he gained experience in running various in vivo drug studies, developing his molecular biology and histology skills, eventually ending up in an epigenetic lab studying parental imprinting and dabbling in genomics.

Now a full-time neuroscience genomics researcher at Novartis, Daniel has helped shape the development of different NGS technology platforms with the company, the major one being DRUG-seq. Since then, he has worked towards becoming a fully dedicated data scientist and at the same time streamlining the DRUG-seq wet lab protocol and computational processes to apply the platform to drug discovery efforts within Novartis. His higher ambitions are to utilize DRUG-seq data in not only enhancing preclinical research efforts, but to investigate whether in vitro transcriptomics data can be linked to clinical findings.

Wed 9th November, 10am

Bio

Edwin Cuppen is initiator and scientific director of the Hartwig Medical Foundation (2015), a not-for-profit organisation that aims to improve cancer care by systematic whole genome sequencing-based diagnostics of tumors and that also maintains one of the world’s largest databases of cancer whole genome sequencing data enriched with transcriptomics and clinical patient data. Edwin is also professor of Human Genetics at the Center for Molecular Medicine of the University Medical Center in Utrecht and invited member of the virtual national cancer research organisation Oncode Institute. After his undergraduate and PhD training at Wageningen University and Radboud University Nijmegen as a molecular geneticist, he held research and group leader positions at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, the Hubrecht Institute and the UMC Utrecht. His expertise is in cancer genomics and functional genetics.

Wed 26th October, 11am

Bio

Dr Vafaee is the Deputy Director of UNSW Data Science Hub (uDASH) and Associate Professor of Computational Biomedicine and Bioinformatics at the School of BABS, UNSW Sydney. She leads AI-enhanced Biomedicine Laboratory (www.VafaeeLab.com) with over 12 members collaboratively working on developing and deploying advanced data science and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to address a variety of pressing biomedical problems. Dr Vafaee is also the Founding Director of OmniOmics.ai Pty Ltd with the vision of accelerating personalised medicine and precision therapy via ‘intelligent multi-omics” approaches to health and disease.

Dr Vafaee has a strong track record of multidisciplinary research leadership and industrial engagement. Her research has attracted >$10.5M  over 12 research projects and industrial partnership grants, including prestigious schemes of Cooperative Research Centre Project (CRC-P, 2019), Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF, 2020, 2021), ARC Discovery (2021), and NHMRC Development (2021). She has co-authored 50 publications (68% first/corresponding author) in prestigious venues—e.g., Nature Methods, Nucleic Acids Research, Nature Communications, Briefings in Bioinformatics, IEEE Trans on Cybernetics, Bioinformatics, Artificial Intelligence Review, Precision Oncology, Cell & Bioscience—demonstrating her research leadership and substantive contribution in methodological changes. She received her PhD in Artificial Intelligence from the School of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago, USA (2011) and has over a decade of research experience in data-driven biomedicine, working at multiple leading institutes in USA, Canada, and Australia.

Wed 14th September, 11am

Bio

Professor David Eisenstat is a paediatric haematologist-oncologist, neuro-oncologist and developmental biologist who received clinical and basic science research training at the University of Toronto, The Hospital for Sick Children (Toronto), University of California, San Francisco's (UCSF) Laboratories of Molecular Neuro-Oncology and Developmental Neurobiology, and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (Houston). From 1999-2011, David was a Senior Investigator at the Manitoba Institute of Cell Biology, CancerCare Manitoba/University of Manitoba (Winnipeg), Director of Paediatric and Adult Neuro-Oncology and Program Director, Advanced Degrees in Medicine at the medical school. From 2011-2020, he was the inaugural Kids with Cancer Society Chair in Pediatric Oncology at the University of Alberta (Edmonton), founding Co-Director of the Cancer Research Institute of Northern Alberta (2014-2017) and Academic Chair and Professor, Dept. Oncology (2017-2020). He joined the Royal Children's Hospital as Director, Children's Cancer Centre in November 2020, is Group Leader, Neuro-Oncology, and Lead, Cancer Flagship at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute and holds academic appointments in the Departments of Paediatrics at both the University of Melbourne and Monash University. David is also Co-Lead of the Victorian Paediatric Cancer Consortium. His research program is focused on the neurodevelopmental origins of paediatric brain tumours.

Wed 24th August, 11am

Bio

Associate Professor Luke Selth leads the Prostate Cancer Research Group at Flinders University and is a Beat Cancer Principal Research Fellow. After a PhD at University of Adelaide, he undertook post-doctoral training at the London Research Institute in the lab of Dr Jesper Svejstrup, where he studied processes underlying transcriptional dysregulation in cancer. Since returning to Adelaide, his research has been focussed on prostate cancer, the 2nd-leading cause of cancer death in Australian men. His lab investigates the mechanisms underlying prostate cancer metastasis and therapy resistance, in particular the roles of transcriptional and epigenetic regulators of these processes. A/Prof Selth has published over 80 original peer-reviewed articles, including recent papers in Cell Reports, Cancer Research, Nature Cell Biology, eLife and Nature Medicine.

Wed 27th July, 11am

Mutations in cancer disrupt the cellular communication circuits that control mitogenesis, metabolism, cell survival, and those that promote clonal evolution and treatment resistance. In the absence of selective treatments for diffuse midline glioma (DMG) patients harbouring ‘undruggable’ mutations, targeting the signalling pathways and activated metabolic pathways unravel by hallmark somatic and epigenetic alterations is an attractive and alternative therapeutic option. Here we have integrated molecular and epigenetic profiling data with that of the proteome driven by the treatment of clinically relevant, DMG selective therapies. In my presentation, I will outline the preclinical data underpinning the international adaptive DMG clinical trial PNOC022 that couples the targeting of DMGs dominant metabolic programs and activated signalling pathways. Finally I will provide preliminary data on the next class of therapies that we hope will improve outcomes for DMG patients.

Bio

Associate Professor Matt Dun’s research focusses on paediatric -leukaemias, and -brain cancers, employing a pharmaco-phospho-proteo-genomic approach, aimed at identifying novel treatment targets and drug combinations to improve survival. Awarded his PhD in 2012, A/Prof Dun’s research has been decorated by 26 national and international awards, including 2019 NSW Premier’s Awards for Outstanding Cancer Research Fellow, and a Young Tall Poppy Science Award in 2020. Throughout Matt’s career, he has secured $12.5M in competitive, industry and philanthropic research funding [2 x CINSW Early Career Fellowships (2014-2016, 2017-2019), NHMRC Investigator Grant (2020-2024), Defeat DIPG Chadtough New Investigator Grant (2020-2021)] and gained CINSW and NHMRC equipment grants that have been instrumental in the establishment of The University of Newcastle’s high-resolution mass spectrometry facility. The preclinical and case study results from his laboratory underpin an international clinical trial employing combination treatment strategies for paediatric, adolescent and young adult patients fighting lethal brain tumours.

Wed 20th July, 11am

Bio

Dr Jason Wong is an Associate Professor in the School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Hong Kong. He received his B.Sc (Hons I) from the University of Sydney and completed his D.Phil at the University of Oxford, UK. After completing post-doctoral training at the University College Dublin, he returned to Sydney in 2008 to establish his research group at the University of New South Wales before moving to Hong Kong in 2018. He has published over 100 original peer-reviewed journal articles with senior authorship in top journals, including Nature, Science Advances and Cell Reports. His current research focuses on studying mutational processes and epigenetic dysregulation in cancer.

Wed 15 June 2022, 11am

Bio

Alex is a Senior Principal Research Fellow and co-Leader of the Cancer Ecosystems Program in the Garvan Institute of Medical Research; a Conjoint Associate Professor at UNSW Sydney and an NHMRC Senior Research Fellow. Alex completed his PhD at UNSW, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship with J. Michael Bishop at UCSF. His lab applies cellular genomics to human breast & prostate cancer & melanoma to gain systems-level insights into disease aetiology and the development of novel treatment strategies.

Wed 11 May 2022, 11am

Bio

Dr Heather Lee is a biomedical scientist with experience in epigenetics, cancer research and developmental biology. She is fascinated by the complexity of biology and excited by the transformative power of new ideas. 

During her post-doctoral training in Cambridge UK, Dr Lee developed world-first methods for analysis of DNA methylation in single cells (Nat Meth 11:817, Nat Meth 13:229-32, Nat Commun 9:781). This unique expertise has allowed Dr Lee to study epigenetic heterogeneity in development and cancer. 

Since 2017, Dr Lee has been leading an independent research team based at the Hunter Medical Research Institute. Her work is investigating epigenetic heterogeneity in Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML) and has been funded by a Cancer Institute NSW Early Career Fellowship, an NHMRC New Investigator Project Grant, and an NHMRC Ideas Grant. Her team continue to develop single-cell methods for epigenetic analysis (Sci Rep 12:5776) and have used these methods to reveal treatment-induced DNA methylation heterogeneity in AML.  

Dr Lee has been an investigator on 16 successful grants with a total value >$4M ($1.4M as lead applicant). She has 25 papers from the last 10 years, including 14 as lead/senior author. Her work has appeared in top-ranking journals (eg Nature, Nature Meth, Cancer Cell, Cell Stem Cell), and is highly cited (mean FWCI = 6.31 since 2012). Dr Lee’s research leadership was recognised by the 2018 Metcalf Prize from the National Stem Cell Foundation of Australia. 

Wed 9 March 2022, 11am

Bio

Dr Tatyana Chtanova is the head of the Innate and Tumour Immunology lab at the Garvan Institute in Sydney. After undergraduate studies at the University of New South Wales, Dr Chtanova was awarded her PhD in 2005 for her thesis work on specific gene expression signatures for novel T cell subsets, performed at the Garvan Institute.

Following her PhD, Tatyana was awarded the Human Frontier Science Program Fellowship to train at the University of California, Berkeley. During her fellowship she gained expertise in in vivo two-photon microscopy and applied it to uncover a unique neutrophil response to inflammation called neutrophil swarming and a novel mechanism of immune evasion by pathogens.

Dr Chtanova returned to the Garvan Institute to establish her research laboratory in 2009. Tatyana’s main research interest is immune cell migration and function in cancer and infection. Her group is especially interested in developing non-invasive approaches such as two-photon microscopy and in situ photoconversion to visualise and track immune cells in vivo. This talk will focus on our recent insights into the role of innate immune cells in infection and cancer obtained using intravital imaging.