About
Dr Tracy O’Mara completed her Bachelor of Applied Science (First Class Honours) at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), researching hormone responses of genes involved in ovarian cancer. She was then employed in an NHMRC-funded research assistant position. In this role, she contributed to studies of prostate cancer and ovarian cancer. She contributed to the first genome-wide association study of prostate cancer published by the international consortium, PRACTICAL.
In 2008, Dr O’Mara commenced her PhD at QUT, studying the role of common genetic variation on endometrial cancer risk and prognosis. She contributed to the first genome-wide association study of endometrial cancer in 2011. On completion of her PhD, Dr O’Mara was awarded an NHMRC Early Career Fellowship to continue her research of endometrial cancer genetics at the QIMR Berghofer.
Dr O’Mara now leads the Endometrial Cancer Association Consortium, with the goal to discover and characterise genetic variants associated with endometrial cancer risk. In 2020, in recognition of her gynaecological cancer research, Dr O’Mara was awarded the Cure Cancer Researcher of the Year.
Research Skills
Team Head
Area of Interest
Dr O’Mara’s research focusses on the discovery and characterisation of endometrial cancer risk loci using genomic data. She has highly developed expertise in the analysis of genome-wide association studies and detailed fine-mapping analysis to identify genetic risk variants. Dr O’Mara is experienced in bioinformatics analysis and involved in the functional characterisation of endometrial cancer risk signals. She has a keen interest in the integration of large-scale genomics data to identify features important for cancer development, including the integration of epigenomic, transcriptomic and genotyping data to predict target genes of genetic risk variants. Dr O’Mara leads the Endometrial Cancer Association Consortium (ECAC), which consists of more than 12,000 endometrial cancer cases contributed by 14 studies from Australia, UK, USA, Belgium, Germany, Norway and Sweden. She is an integral part of this consortium, leading genetic analysis, overseeing efforts within and between research groups, and co-ordinating biospecimen shipment and data transfer.