ACRF Centre for Optimised Cancer Therapy

Professor Steven Lane is a clinical haematologist and devotes 30% of his time to seeing patients with leukaemia and related blood disorders at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital. Professor Lane is active in clinical trials including as principal investigator on prospective clinical trials in acute leukaemia and has accredited GCP training.

Nic is an NHMRC L2 Investigator and uses sequence data to study disease. She completed her PhD in 2003 at the University of Leicester UK, then undertook two post doc positions at QIMR Berghofer (with KumKum Khanna and Georgia Chenevix-Trench) before working at the IMB in UQ.

In 2015, Nic established the Medical Genomics Group at QIMR Berghofer, who use multi-omic data to predict patient outcomes and identify novel markers of prognosis and treatment response. She played a key role in the Australian International Cancer Genome Consortia (ICGC) projects and the Australian Melanoma Genome Project (AMGP).

She has published as last or co-last author in high impact journals including Nature, Cancer Cell, Nature Communications and Nature Reviews in Clinical Oncology, with her work receiving more than 30k cites.

She is co-founder of precision analytics company, genomiQa. This company specialises in in whole genome data analysis.

Professor Whitehall has researched the molecular basis of colorectal cancer for the past 20 years. After completing postdoctoral studies as a CJ Martin Fellow at the Kimmel Cancer Center in Philadelphia, she returned to QIMR Berghofer in 2005. She has contributed key conceptual advances to understanding the evolution of colorectal polyp subtypes to clinically relevant groups of colorectal cancers. Her research findings together with active clinical collaborations with gastroenterologists, pathologists and oncologist, have contributed to altered clinical guidelines for the management of colorectal polyps and cancers.

John Pearson is a trained biochemist and has spent the last 25 years creating software for medical researchers. John has worked in Australia and the United States and has held software development grants from Microsoft, the American Cancer Society, and the US National Institutes of Health.

Associate Professor Nguyen acquired multidisciplinary expertise at the world’s top innovative institutions in Australia (UQ, CSIRO) and internationally (RIKEN Institute and Stanford School of Medicine).

With supports from multiple prestigious fellowships, including ARC DECRA and NHMRC (EL2), he established his leadership in addressing cancer complexity at single cell and tissue levels. Associate Professor Nguyen has led multiple large-scale projects/programs, funded nationally (e.g., ARC, NHMRC, MRFF) and internationally (e.g., DoD, NCI, Wellcome Trust).

She completed her PhD in molecular biology at the University of Queensland (UQ, 2002). Her postdoctoral training was carried out at UQ and the Breast Cancer Now Toby Robins Research Centre in London, funded by an NHMRC CJ Martin Fellowship. She was recruited to QIMR Berghofer in 2013, where she established a multidisciplinary group focused on understanding how genetic variation contributes to cancer risk and progression. Her laboratory is particularly interested in translating the findings of cancer GWAS, including identification of functional risk variants, connecting these variants to their target genes and understanding how these genes contribute to cancer phenotypes. Her research integrates genetics, chromatin and transcriptome profiling, computational genomics and molecular studies to unravel the complexity of cancer development. Her discoveries have accelerated progress from genetic studies to biological knowledge that may ultimately guide preventative and therapeutic measures.

Dr Siok Tey graduated from the University of Queensland Medical School in 1996 with First Class Honours and a University Medal. She completed her training in clinical and laboratory haematology in Brisbane in 2005, then undertook a two-year research fellowship (2005 – 2007) at the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, USA. She returned to Australia in 2007 and completed a PhD in viral T cell immunity (2007 – 11), followed by a post-doctorate in clinical and experimental bone marrow transplant immunology (2012 – 2016), both at QIMR Berghofer.

In 2014, Dr Tey opened the first clinical trial in Australia using a "safety switch" T cell engineering method that she helped develop while in the USA to make bone marrow transplantation safer. Dr Tey started her own laboratory in 2017, where she continues to focus on integrating and translating her expertise in immunology, cell therapy and clinical medicine into novel therapeutics for the treatment of cancer and immune complications arising from bone marrow transplantation. In 2021, she opened a phase I clinical trial in collaboration with the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital using on-site manufactured CAR T cells to improve access and turn around time, and reduce cost.

Dr Tey maintains active clinical practice as a senior staff specialist in clinical haematology and bone marrow transplantation at the Royal Brisbane & Women’s Hospital. She is Clinical Director of Genetically Modified Cellular Therapies in the department. She was recipient of an NHMRC Early Career Research Fellowship (2013 –2016) and 3 NHMRC CIA project grants. She has published in New England Journal of Medicine, Science, Nature Immunology, Lancet Oncology, Journal of Clinical Investigation, amongst others. Dr Tey has served on the editorial boards of Clinical and Translational Immunology and Blood Advances. She co-chairs the Stem Cell Transplant Working Party at the Australasian Leukaemia and Lymphoma Group, and is Australia / New Zealand Regional Vice President Elect for the International Society of Cell and Gene Therapy.

Dr Lachlan Harris performed his PhD in Associate Professor Michael Piper’s lab at The University of Queensland (2013-2017) on NFI transcription factor regulation of neural stem cells, uncovering how these genes promote nerve cell production.

After completing his PhD, he was driven to move internationally, and obtained a four-year Crick Postdoctoral Training Fellow position, where he studied the regulation of adult neural stem cell quiescence. Here, he discovered that adult brain stem cells deepen their quiescence during aging to preserve lifelong nerve cell production. In the process, he also helped to define the molecular pathways controlling this process.

He came to understand that quiescence was a major disease obstacle in adult brain cancer and that the biological insights from neuroscience research could be used to help patients. To this end, in June 2021 he returned to Australia to QIMR Berghofer to develop strategies to target these cells to improve outcomes for these patients, beginning his own Cancer Neuroscience Laboratory at QIMR Berghofer in January 2023.