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MOGA Annual Scientific Meeting
National Speakers Associate Professor Richard Cohn is Head of Clinical Oncology in the Kids Cancer Centre at Sydney Children’s Hospital and the Clinical Program Director of Medicine and Diagnostics in the Sydney Children’s Hospital Network, Randwick. He is a conjoint Associate Professor in the School of Women’s and Children’s Health, University of New South Wales (UNSW) Medicine and has co-authored over 120 peer reviewed scientific publications. His main research interests are late effects of cancer therapy in childhood cancer survivors and the psychosocial aspects of paediatric and adolescent cancer. Longitudinal follow-up of adult survivors of childhood cancer has allowed important understanding of the risks of late effects. Together with the Molecular Epidemiology Group at the Children’s Cancer Institute Associate Professor Cohn has established the NSW late-effects cohort, including patients seen at the three paediatric oncology treatment services in NSW. Annotated medical data and banked DNA from this cohort is critical to the identification, prevention, and treatment of adverse effects in long-term survivors, and allows the development of targeted interventions for survivors at particular risk. A study from the program confirmed that the rates of metabolic syndrome are increased in survivors of childhood cancer. In collaboration with colleagues from the School of Medical Sciences, UNSW and with researchers from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, Associate Professor Cohn is investigating the molecular events that result in insulin resistance in survivors. He chairs the Survivorship sub-committee of the Australian and New Zealand Children’s Haematology Oncology Group (ANZCHOG), which serves as a vehicle for facilitating national discussion and research on the care of long-term cancer survivors. He is an invited member of the International Committee for Harmonization of Health Screening Guidelines for Childhood Cancer Survivors and the paediatric co-director of the NSW Centre for Cancer Survivorship at UNSW, the first survivorship clinic in the state to span paediatric and adult cancer survivors. Associate Professor Cohn has also been pivotal in establishing one of the largest and most productive research groups
focusing on the psychosocial aspects of paediatric cancer in Australia, the Behavioural Sciences Unit (BSU) at Sydney Children’s Hospital. The BSU has published on the full trajectory of cancer from diagnosis to long-term follow-up and bereavement. Associate Professor Cohn has also published on the feasibility and acceptability of E-Health applications in paediatric oncology. Using innovative models of healthcare, such as an E-Health platform has allowed delivery of psychosocial support and access to interventions to accommodate rural/remote families. Professor David Currow is the Chief Cancer Officer, New South Wales (NSW) and Chief Executive Officer, Cancer Institute NSW, the NSW Government’s cancer control agency. He was appointed to the position in March 2010 after previously serving as the foundation Chief Executive Officer of Cancer Australia, the Commonwealth’s cancer control agency. Professor Currow leads a team of people whose expertise and remit include prevention (tobacco control, ultraviolet light protection), screening (BreastScreen, Cervical Screening and Bowel Screening), service performance and development (including the population based cancer registry, Australia’s only population-based clinical cancer registry, eviQ – the world’s major evidence-based protocol website in oncology, and Canrefer, linking general practitioners and consumers with multidisciplinary teams in two clicks of a button), and strategic research and investment. The role of the Cancer Institute NSW is to decrease the incidence of cancer, increase the survival for people who are diagnosed with cancer and improve the quality of care for people with cancer. Cancer outcomes continue to improve as a result of whole-of-system changes. Professor Currow is the previous president of the Clinical Oncological Society of Australia and past president of Palliative Care Australia. He has served on the American Society of Clinical Oncology working party on palliative care education, chaired the working party for the Union of International Cancer Control on Palliative Care for the United Nations summit on non-communicable diseases
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and has been on the faculty for the Australia and Asia Pacific Clinical Oncology Research Development workshop (ACORD). Professor Stewart Dunn is Professor of Psychological Medicine at the Sydney Medical School, Northern and Director, Pam McLean Communications Centre at the University of Sydney. His clinical speciality is the psychological care of cancer patients, their families and medical staff. His research and clinical interests are in psychological aspects of medical illness, doctor-patient and interprofessional communication, and human factors in medical error. He has received over $4.6 million in peerreviewed grant funding, and published 250 journal articles and scientific abstracts. Professor Dunn has received ten research travel awards and six teaching awards including the University of Sydney Faculty of Medicine Outstanding Teaching Award in 2005 and 2012 and the Vice-Chancellor’s Teaching Award 2013. As Director of the Pam McLean Centre he works with professional actors to provide workshops on clinical communication in Australia and New Zealand. Dr Dariush Etemadmoghadam is a senior research officer at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne. He joined the Centre’s Cancer Genomics and Genetics Laboratory as a PhD student in 2004. Dr Etemadmoghadam has led the work identifying Cyclin E1 gene amplification as a key prognostic marker of primary treatment failure and a potential therapeutic target in high-grade serous ovarian cancer (Etemadmoghadam D. et al., 2009 Clinical Cancer Research; 2010 PLoS ONE; 2012 The Journal of Pathology; 2013 Clinical Cancer Research and 2013 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America). He is currently involved in the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC), a large-scale genomics study of tumors from over 50 different cancer types (Hudson T.J. et al., 2010 Nature). An analysis of next-generation sequence data from primary and recurrent ovarian samples by the Australian team, focusing on mechanisms of primary and acquired drug resistance, has recently been published in Nature (Patch A-M. et al., 2015).
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Professor Michael Fenech is Director and Team Leader of the Genome Health and Personalised Nutrition Laboratory at CSIRO Food and Nutrition in Adelaide. He is recognized internationally for his research in nutritional genomics and genetic toxicology and for developing the cytokinesis-block micronucleus (CBMN) assay which is now a gold standard method used internationally to measure DNA damage in human cells in vitro and in vivo. The CBMN assay has been endorsed by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the OECD for in vivo radiation biodosimetry and in vitro testing of genotoxins respectively. His key goal is to determine the nutritional and environmental requirements for DNA damage prevention using in vitro systems, epidemiology and placebo-controlled human intervention trials. In 2003– 05, Professor Fenech proposed a novel disease prevention strategy based on personalized diagnosis and prevention of DNA damage by appropriate diet/life-style intervention, which has led to the Genome Health Clinic concept and its translation into practice. In 2003–2009 his laboratory further developed the CBMN assay into a ‘cytome’ assay consisting of six complementary biomarkers of DNA damage and cytotoxicity which is now published in Nature Protocols. He co-founded the ongoing HUMN and HUMN-XL projects on micronuclei in human population and is a member of the coordinating group and cofounder of the Micronutrients Genomics Project which he has been leading since July 2011. His research is currently also focused on the impact of nutrition and psychological stress on telomere integrity; and, personalized nutrition for dementia prevention and cancer growth control in cancer survivors. He conceived novel quantitative PCR methods for measuring absolute telomere length and telomere base damage which were later developed by the team he leads at CSIRO. He was awarded the Flinders University’s Convocation Medal in 2007, the Alexander Hollaender Award in 2008 and the honorary titles of Adjunct Professor at University of South Australia in 2009, Visiting Professor at Taipei Medical University in 2010, Professorial Fellow at Flinders University in 2011 and Honorary Fellow of the Australian College of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine in 2012 for his leadership and contributions to environmental and nutritional genomic sciences internationally. In 2013 he was awarded the honorary academic title of Affiliate Professor by the University of Adelaide and elected President of the 8th Congress of the International Society of
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Nutrigenetics/Nutrigenomics. In 2014 he was elected Foundation President of the Asia-Pacific Nutrigenomics and Nutrigenetics Organization. Since 2009 he has been an invited speaker at 45 international conferences. Associate Professor Prudence Francis is the Head of the Medical Oncology Breast Service at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne and the recipient of the 2015 Cancer Achievement Award supported by Novartis Oncology and the Medical Oncology Group of Australia. Her clinical practice is devoted to breast cancer and nationally she is recognized as an expert in the field. Associate Professor Francis is a Visiting Oncology Specialist and Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine at St Vincent’s Hospital, University of Melbourne; and, a Conjoint Associate Professor in the Faculty of Health and Medicine, University of Newcastle. She serves on a number of committees and scientific organizations at a state, national and international level including: Chair, Breast Trial Subcommittee, Cancer Council Victoria; Vice-Chair, Scientific Advisory Committee Australia and New Zealand Breast Cancer Trials Group; Member of the Scientific Committee, International Breast Cancer Study Group; Faculty Member for Breast Cancer, European Society for Medical Oncology; Member of the International Advanced Breast Cancer Consensus Guidelines Panel; and Medical Oncology Editor, The Breast Journal. Associate Professor Francis has been committed to improving outcomes and care for patients with breast cancer through clinical trial cancer research, associated translational research and education. Through her role in developing international clinical trials, more than 1,000 patients in Australia and New Zealand have been recruited to randomized phase 3 trials in which she has an international leadership role (BIG 02-98, SOFT and TEXT). She has been an author of three original research publications in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) in the past year, including a firstauthor publication, and a senior-author publication (also the subject of a Plenary Presentation at the 2014 ASCO Annual Meeting). The SOFT phase 3 trial (P. Francis et al., NEJM 2015) which she led and chaired internationally, recruited 3,066 young women with early breast cancer at more than 400 centres in 25 countries. The SOFT trial results will change practice in the management of hormone receptor-positive breast cancer in
MOGA Annual Scientific Meeting
premenopausal women and sets the scene for improving the outcomes for young women with breast cancer. Associate Professor Chris Karapetis is Regional Director of Cancer Services for the Southern Area Health Network, covering Flinders Medical Centre, the Repatriation General Hospital and the Noarlunga Health Service. He is the Head of the Department of Medical Oncology and Director of Clinical Research in Medical Oncology at the Flinders Medical Centre and the Flinders Centre for Innovation in Cancer, Flinders University. Associate Professor Karapetis’ interest in clinical research developed following a research fellowship at Guy’s Hospital in London. He has been the principal investigator on over 80 clinical trials. He has established research interests in the areas of gastrointestinal malignancy, lung cancer, molecular targeted therapies, predictive biomarkers, epidemiology and clinical research methodology. Associate Professor Karapetis is the former Chair of the Gastrointestinal Group of the Clinical Oncology Society of Australia and is a current board member of the Clinical Oncology Society of Australia. He is a member of the Australasian Gastrointestinal Trials Group (AGITG), and he has been an active collaborator with the AGITG on many clinical trials. He was the principal investigator for the CO.17 clinical trial, and he led the K-ras biomarker research from this study. He is also an active contributor to clinical research conducted through the Australian Lung Trials Group. Dr Belinda Kiely is a medical oncologist at both Concord and Campbelltown hospitals. She specializes in the treatment of breast cancer. Dr Kiely is also a clinical research fellow at the National Health and Medical Research Centre (NHMRC) Clinical Trials Centre, University of Sydney, where she completed her PhD. Her main research interest is improving the way oncologists estimate and explain survival time to patients with advanced cancer and this was the subject of her PhD. Dr Kiely led the development of the iTool, a web-based tool to help oncologists estimate and communicate survival time for patients with advanced cancer. She is the principal investigator in a multi-site study evaluating the use of the
National Speakers
iTool in oncology outpatient clinics. Dr Kiely was the recipient of an American Society of Clinical Oncology Young Investigator Award in 2011 for the iTool study. She has also appeared on the SBS television program Insight in an episode titled Knowing that you’re dying. Professor Bogda Koczwara AM is a medical oncologist at the Flinders Centre for Innovation in Cancer in Adelaide and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Translating Research into Practice Fellow. Her clinical interests revolve around management of breast cancer, survivorship care, psycho-oncology and supportive care and she has a particular interest in strengthening the interface between specialist and primary care for cancer patients especially in rural Australia. She leads the Survivorship Program at the Flinders Centre for Innovation in Cancer. She is the Lead in Survivorship for the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute Comprehensive Cancer Consortium. Professor Koczwara is the past President of the Clinical Oncology Society of Australia, the peak cancer professional organization in Australia and the past President of the Medical Oncology Group of Australia, the national professional organisation of medical oncologists. She is the initiator and the immediate past Chair of the Australia Asia Pacific Clinical Oncology Research Development, a collaborative of international cancer organizations aimed at improving cancer research capacity in Australia and Asia Pacific. Dr Alex Menzies, BSc(Med), MBBS, FRACP, is a medical oncologist and senior research fellow at the Melanoma Institute Australia, Royal North Shore Hospital, and The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia. He graduated with honours from the University of New South Wales in 2003, and completed specialist training in medical oncology at Westmead Hospital in 2011. In 2012, Dr Menzies commenced postgraduate research exploring biomarkers of response and resistance to targeted therapy in melanoma. He has been an investigator on multiple phase I-III clinical trials in melanoma, and continues both clinical and translational research.
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Associate Professor Linda Mileshkin is a medical oncologist and clinical researcher with a particular interest in the treatment of gynaecological and lung cancers, as well as the supportive care of people affected by cancer. She also runs the only specialist Carcinoma of Unknown Primary (CUP) clinic at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Mebourne. She is currently involved in multiple clinical research projects involving people with lung and gynaecological cancers, and CUP, as well as phase I trials in multiple tumor types. Associate Professor Mileshkin is the Chair of the Research Advisory Committee for the Australia New Zealand Gynaecological Oncology Group, and also a member of the board for this group. Her current research focuses on early and late phase clinical trials testing novel therapies for cancer; and the supportive care of people affected by cancer. Associate Professor Phillip Parente trained at Monash University graduating with First Class Honours in 1993. He completed training in medical oncology in 2001 and completed a 2 year Fellowship in Immunology and Melanoma at Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research at Austin. Initially he worked as a medical oncologist at both Eastern Health and Austin Health. His current role is Director of Cancer Services Eastern Health. His main areas of interest are genitourinary cancers, lung cancers and melanoma and he is considered a clinical lead in these areas of oncology. With respect to oncology research he is principal investigator of numerous trials in his areas of interest. This has translated to numerous publications and presentations at local and international oncological conferences. He often gives presentations on his areas of interests to trainees and peers. Associate Professor Parente has a particular interest in teaching and training. He has been a Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Medicine, Monash University since 2002. He is on the National Examining Panel for the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) and Chair of the Specialist Advisory Committee for Medical Oncology for the RACP. He is also an executive committee member of Medical Oncology Group of Australia.
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Professor Danny Rischin is the Co-Director of the Division of Cancer Medicine and Head of the Department of Medical Oncology at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne. He is a Professor of Medicine in the Sir Peter MacCallum Department of Oncology and the Department of Medicine at the University of Melbourne. He graduated from Monash University (MBBS Hons) in Melbourne and completed his internal medicine and medical oncology training in Melbourne and Toronto. He was awarded a Doctor of Medicine from Monash University for his thesis on New approaches to chemoradiation in loco-regionally advanced cancers of the Head and Neck Since 2011 he has been an Associate Editor of the Journal of Clinical Oncology, having previously been a member of the Journal’s editorial board. Professor Rischin’s major clinical and research interests are in head and neck and gynaecologic cancers. He was a member of the Trans-Tasman Radiation Oncology Group (TROG) scientific committee 1999–2014, Chair of the Australian and New Zealand Gynaecologic Oncology Group (ANZGOG) Research Advisory Committee 2002–2010, and remains on the ANZGOG Board. He has been the principal or co-principal investigator on numerous head and neck cancer trials, including several trials run under the auspices of TROG. He has published over 200 original manuscripts, editorials and book chapters with a major focus on clinical trials, chemoradiation, hypoxia targeting therapy and biomarkers in head and neck cancer. Associate Professor Sabe Sabesan is the Clinical Dean of the Northern Clinical Training Network-Townsville (James Cook University and Townsville Health and Hospital Services) and the Director of the Department of Medical Oncology at the Townsville Cancer Centre, Townsville Hospital, Queensland. He developed and established the Townsville Teleoncology Network (TTN) and the Tropical Centre for Telehealth Practice and Research in North Queensland to decrease the disparity in access to specialist care faced by rural and remote Australians. Under the TTN and the Telehealth Centre, he has developed and implemented various telesupervision models for medical
MOGA Annual Scientific Meeting
training, remote chemotherapy supervision model for rural chemotherapy administration (Queensland Remote Chemotherapy Supervision model-QReCS), and shared care models with general practitioners or cancer care closer to homes. Published results of the evaluation of various aspects of the teleoncology model led to further improvement of these models. As the current Chair of the Regional and Rural Group of the Clinical Oncology Group of Australia (COSA) and the COSA Network of Directors of Regional Cancer Centres, he is facilitating the development of the COSA teleoncology guidelines. His steering committee memberships include Queensland clinical senate and state-wide rural and remote clinical networks. Professor John Seymour is a clinical haematologist and CoDirector of the Division of Cancer Medicine, at the Peter MacCallum Centre in Melbourne, Australia. He received his MB, BS degrees from the University of Melbourne in 1987, pursued training in haematology including a fellowship at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, from which he received their Distinguished Alumnus award in 2011. He also completed PhD studies at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. Professor Seymour is a member of several national and international scientific committees including, Cancer Australia Advisory Groups, the Scientific Advisory Committee for the International Conference on Malignant Lymphoma, Medical Advisory Board of the Lymphoma Coalition, and the Board of Directors of the International Extranodal Lymphoma Study Group. He is the immediate ex-Chair of the major national clinical trials co-operative group in haematologic malignancies, the Australasian Leukaemia and Lymphoma Group. He is a frequent invited speaker nationally and internationally, is a member of numerous professional societies, and is the Editor-inChief of Leukemia and Lymphoma and on the editorial boards of the, British Journal of Haematology, and Leukemia Research. He has also authored 15 book chapters, ∼400 peer reviewed publications (which have been cited more than 13000 times), and ∼600 conference abstracts. Actively involved in research, Professor Seymour has received more than AUD$8.3 million of competitive grant funding in the last 5 years and is the national study chair for 12 ongoing national or international clinical trials.
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National Speakers
Associate Professor Ben Solomon MBBS, PhD, FRACP is a medical oncologist at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Colorado he returned to Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in 2006 where he practices as a medical oncologist with a focus on clinical and translational research in lung cancer, head and neck cancer and phase I studies of novel anticancer therapies. He has been involved in the clinical development of crizotinib and other targeted therapies extending from the phase I study through to phase III studies. Dr Christopher Steer is a medical oncologist working at Border Medical Oncology in Albury Wodonga. He is the Chair of the Geriatric Oncology Interest Group of the Clinical Oncology Society of Australia (COSA). He is actively involved in the International Society of Geriatric Oncology (SIOG) and is currently Convener of the Annual Scientific Meeting in Prague in November 2015. He is an editorial board member of the Journal of Geriatric Oncology. Dr Steer is the current President of the Private Cancer Physicians of Australia (PCPA) and served as a member of the executive (honorary treasurer) of the Medical Oncology Group of Australia (MOGA) from 2009–2014. He is a member of the MOGA and PCPA Cancer Drugs Working Group. He is a principal investigator at the Border Medical Oncology Research Unit (BMORU). The BMORU has been recognized for innovation in clinical research particularly in delivering care to a rural and regional population. Dr Steer has led a pilot project of supportive care in older adults with cancer with funding from Cancer Australia. Professor Martin Stockler is Professor of Cancer Medicine and Clinical Epidemiology at The University of Sydney, Consultant Medical Oncologist at Concord and Royal Prince Alfred Hospitals, and Co-Director of Oncology at the National Health and
Medical Research Council Clinical Trials Centre. After internal medicine training at the Prince of Wales and Prince Henry Hospitals, and medical oncology training at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital all in Sydney, he spent 3 years in Canada doing a clinical research fellowship at the Princess Margaret Hospital and a Masters in Clinical Epidemiology at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on improving quality of life, survival, prognostication, and doctor-patient communication for those affected by cancer, particularly those arising from genitourinary, breast, gynaecologic, and lung primaries. His clinical focus is genitourinary cancer. Dr Constantine Tam is an academic haematologist at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, where he conducts research programs in the field of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). Dr Tam graduated in 1998 from the University of Melbourne, dual trained in haematology and haematopathology, and completed a Leukemia Fellowship at the MD Anderson Cancer Center as well as a research Doctorate of Medicine at the University of Melbourne. Dr Tam ran the CLL trials program St Vincent’s Hospital until 2012, when he was recruited to Peter MacCallum to lead the development program for novel agents including lenalidomide, ibrutinib, ABT199, IPI-145, CTL-019 and BGB-3111. Dr Tam participates extensively in clinical research, being a scientific advisory council member of the Australasian Leukemia and Lymphoma Group (where he is Chair of Myeloproliferative Diseases and Supportive Care); he is a member of multiple international working groups including the CLL Global US-European Alliance, International Workshop for Waldenstrom Macroglobulinemia and the Hairy Cell Research Consortium. Since 2012, Dr Tam has received over $5.7 million in competitive grant or industry funding, either as Chief or Associate Investigator. As of December 2014, he has authored 94 papers, with a total of 1305 Web of ScienceTM citations. In 2013, Dr Tam was awarded the Herman Clinical Fellowship for Translational Cancer Research from the University of Melbourne.
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MOGA Annual Scientific Meeting
National Speakers Associate Professor Richard Cohn is Head of Clinical Oncology in the Kids Cancer Centre at Sydney Children’s Hospital and the Clinical Program Director of Medicine and Diagnostics in the Sydney Children’s Hospital Network, Randwick. He is a conjoint Associate Professor in the School of Women’s and Children’s Health, University of New South Wales (UNSW) Medicine and has co-authored over 120 peer reviewed scientific publications. His main research interests are late effects of cancer therapy in childhood cancer survivors and the psychosocial aspects of paediatric and adolescent cancer. Longitudinal follow-up of adult survivors of childhood cancer has allowed important understanding of the risks of late effects. Together with the Molecular Epidemiology Group at the Children’s Cancer Institute Associate Professor Cohn has established the NSW late-effects cohort, including patients seen at the three paediatric oncology treatment services in NSW. Annotated medical data and banked DNA from this cohort is critical to the identification, prevention, and treatment of adverse effects in long-term survivors, and allows the development of targeted interventions for survivors at particular risk. A study from the program confirmed that the rates of metabolic syndrome are increased in survivors of childhood cancer. In collaboration with colleagues from the School of Medical Sciences, UNSW and with researchers from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, Associate Professor Cohn is investigating the molecular events that result in insulin resistance in survivors. He chairs the Survivorship sub-committee of the Australian and New Zealand Children’s Haematology Oncology Group (ANZCHOG), which serves as a vehicle for facilitating national discussion and research on the care of long-term cancer survivors. He is an invited member of the International Committee for Harmonization of Health Screening Guidelines for Childhood Cancer Survivors and the paediatric co-director of the NSW Centre for Cancer Survivorship at UNSW, the first survivorship clinic in the state to span paediatric and adult cancer survivors. Associate Professor Cohn has also been pivotal in establishing one of the largest and most productive research groups
focusing on the psychosocial aspects of paediatric cancer in Australia, the Behavioural Sciences Unit (BSU) at Sydney Children’s Hospital. The BSU has published on the full trajectory of cancer from diagnosis to long-term follow-up and bereavement. Associate Professor Cohn has also published on the feasibility and acceptability of E-Health applications in paediatric oncology. Using innovative models of healthcare, such as an E-Health platform has allowed delivery of psychosocial support and access to interventions to accommodate rural/remote families. Professor David Currow is the Chief Cancer Officer, New South Wales (NSW) and Chief Executive Officer, Cancer Institute NSW, the NSW Government’s cancer control agency. He was appointed to the position in March 2010 after previously serving as the foundation Chief Executive Officer of Cancer Australia, the Commonwealth’s cancer control agency. Professor Currow leads a team of people whose expertise and remit include prevention (tobacco control, ultraviolet light protection), screening (BreastScreen, Cervical Screening and Bowel Screening), service performance and development (including the population based cancer registry, Australia’s only population-based clinical cancer registry, eviQ – the world’s major evidence-based protocol website in oncology, and Canrefer, linking general practitioners and consumers with multidisciplinary teams in two clicks of a button), and strategic research and investment. The role of the Cancer Institute NSW is to decrease the incidence of cancer, increase the survival for people who are diagnosed with cancer and improve the quality of care for people with cancer. Cancer outcomes continue to improve as a result of whole-of-system changes. Professor Currow is the previous president of the Clinical Oncological Society of Australia and past president of Palliative Care Australia. He has served on the American Society of Clinical Oncology working party on palliative care education, chaired the working party for the Union of International Cancer Control on Palliative Care for the United Nations summit on non-communicable diseases
National Speakers
and has been on the faculty for the Australia and Asia Pacific Clinical Oncology Research Development workshop (ACORD). Professor Stewart Dunn is Professor of Psychological Medicine at the Sydney Medical School, Northern and Director, Pam McLean Communications Centre at the University of Sydney. His clinical speciality is the psychological care of cancer patients, their families and medical staff. His research and clinical interests are in psychological aspects of medical illness, doctor-patient and interprofessional communication, and human factors in medical error. He has received over $4.6 million in peerreviewed grant funding, and published 250 journal articles and scientific abstracts. Professor Dunn has received ten research travel awards and six teaching awards including the University of Sydney Faculty of Medicine Outstanding Teaching Award in 2005 and 2012 and the Vice-Chancellor’s Teaching Award 2013. As Director of the Pam McLean Centre he works with professional actors to provide workshops on clinical communication in Australia and New Zealand. Dr Dariush Etemadmoghadam is a senior research officer at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne. He joined the Centre’s Cancer Genomics and Genetics Laboratory as a PhD student in 2004. Dr Etemadmoghadam has led the work identifying Cyclin E1 gene amplification as a key prognostic marker of primary treatment failure and a potential therapeutic target in high-grade serous ovarian cancer (Etemadmoghadam D. et al., 2009 Clinical Cancer Research; 2010 PLoS ONE; 2012 The Journal of Pathology; 2013 Clinical Cancer Research and 2013 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America). He is currently involved in the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC), a large-scale genomics study of tumors from over 50 different cancer types (Hudson T.J. et al., 2010 Nature). An analysis of next-generation sequence data from primary and recurrent ovarian samples by the Australian team, focusing on mechanisms of primary and acquired drug resistance, has recently been published in Nature (Patch A-M. et al., 2015).
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Professor Michael Fenech is Director and Team Leader of the Genome Health and Personalised Nutrition Laboratory at CSIRO Food and Nutrition in Adelaide. He is recognized internationally for his research in nutritional genomics and genetic toxicology and for developing the cytokinesis-block micronucleus (CBMN) assay which is now a gold standard method used internationally to measure DNA damage in human cells in vitro and in vivo. The CBMN assay has been endorsed by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the OECD for in vivo radiation biodosimetry and in vitro testing of genotoxins respectively. His key goal is to determine the nutritional and environmental requirements for DNA damage prevention using in vitro systems, epidemiology and placebo-controlled human intervention trials. In 2003– 05, Professor Fenech proposed a novel disease prevention strategy based on personalized diagnosis and prevention of DNA damage by appropriate diet/life-style intervention, which has led to the Genome Health Clinic concept and its translation into practice. In 2003–2009 his laboratory further developed the CBMN assay into a ‘cytome’ assay consisting of six complementary biomarkers of DNA damage and cytotoxicity which is now published in Nature Protocols. He co-founded the ongoing HUMN and HUMN-XL projects on micronuclei in human population and is a member of the coordinating group and cofounder of the Micronutrients Genomics Project which he has been leading since July 2011. His research is currently also focused on the impact of nutrition and psychological stress on telomere integrity; and, personalized nutrition for dementia prevention and cancer growth control in cancer survivors. He conceived novel quantitative PCR methods for measuring absolute telomere length and telomere base damage which were later developed by the team he leads at CSIRO. He was awarded the Flinders University’s Convocation Medal in 2007, the Alexander Hollaender Award in 2008 and the honorary titles of Adjunct Professor at University of South Australia in 2009, Visiting Professor at Taipei Medical University in 2010, Professorial Fellow at Flinders University in 2011 and Honorary Fellow of the Australian College of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine in 2012 for his leadership and contributions to environmental and nutritional genomic sciences internationally. In 2013 he was awarded the honorary academic title of Affiliate Professor by the University of Adelaide and elected President of the 8th Congress of the International Society of
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Nutrigenetics/Nutrigenomics. In 2014 he was elected Foundation President of the Asia-Pacific Nutrigenomics and Nutrigenetics Organization. Since 2009 he has been an invited speaker at 45 international conferences. Associate Professor Prudence Francis is the Head of the Medical Oncology Breast Service at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne and the recipient of the 2015 Cancer Achievement Award supported by Novartis Oncology and the Medical Oncology Group of Australia. Her clinical practice is devoted to breast cancer and nationally she is recognized as an expert in the field. Associate Professor Francis is a Visiting Oncology Specialist and Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine at St Vincent’s Hospital, University of Melbourne; and, a Conjoint Associate Professor in the Faculty of Health and Medicine, University of Newcastle. She serves on a number of committees and scientific organizations at a state, national and international level including: Chair, Breast Trial Subcommittee, Cancer Council Victoria; Vice-Chair, Scientific Advisory Committee Australia and New Zealand Breast Cancer Trials Group; Member of the Scientific Committee, International Breast Cancer Study Group; Faculty Member for Breast Cancer, European Society for Medical Oncology; Member of the International Advanced Breast Cancer Consensus Guidelines Panel; and Medical Oncology Editor, The Breast Journal. Associate Professor Francis has been committed to improving outcomes and care for patients with breast cancer through clinical trial cancer research, associated translational research and education. Through her role in developing international clinical trials, more than 1,000 patients in Australia and New Zealand have been recruited to randomized phase 3 trials in which she has an international leadership role (BIG 02-98, SOFT and TEXT). She has been an author of three original research publications in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) in the past year, including a firstauthor publication, and a senior-author publication (also the subject of a Plenary Presentation at the 2014 ASCO Annual Meeting). The SOFT phase 3 trial (P. Francis et al., NEJM 2015) which she led and chaired internationally, recruited 3,066 young women with early breast cancer at more than 400 centres in 25 countries. The SOFT trial results will change practice in the management of hormone receptor-positive breast cancer in
MOGA Annual Scientific Meeting
premenopausal women and sets the scene for improving the outcomes for young women with breast cancer. Associate Professor Chris Karapetis is Regional Director of Cancer Services for the Southern Area Health Network, covering Flinders Medical Centre, the Repatriation General Hospital and the Noarlunga Health Service. He is the Head of the Department of Medical Oncology and Director of Clinical Research in Medical Oncology at the Flinders Medical Centre and the Flinders Centre for Innovation in Cancer, Flinders University. Associate Professor Karapetis’ interest in clinical research developed following a research fellowship at Guy’s Hospital in London. He has been the principal investigator on over 80 clinical trials. He has established research interests in the areas of gastrointestinal malignancy, lung cancer, molecular targeted therapies, predictive biomarkers, epidemiology and clinical research methodology. Associate Professor Karapetis is the former Chair of the Gastrointestinal Group of the Clinical Oncology Society of Australia and is a current board member of the Clinical Oncology Society of Australia. He is a member of the Australasian Gastrointestinal Trials Group (AGITG), and he has been an active collaborator with the AGITG on many clinical trials. He was the principal investigator for the CO.17 clinical trial, and he led the K-ras biomarker research from this study. He is also an active contributor to clinical research conducted through the Australian Lung Trials Group. Dr Belinda Kiely is a medical oncologist at both Concord and Campbelltown hospitals. She specializes in the treatment of breast cancer. Dr Kiely is also a clinical research fellow at the National Health and Medical Research Centre (NHMRC) Clinical Trials Centre, University of Sydney, where she completed her PhD. Her main research interest is improving the way oncologists estimate and explain survival time to patients with advanced cancer and this was the subject of her PhD. Dr Kiely led the development of the iTool, a web-based tool to help oncologists estimate and communicate survival time for patients with advanced cancer. She is the principal investigator in a multi-site study evaluating the use of the
National Speakers
iTool in oncology outpatient clinics. Dr Kiely was the recipient of an American Society of Clinical Oncology Young Investigator Award in 2011 for the iTool study. She has also appeared on the SBS television program Insight in an episode titled Knowing that you’re dying. Professor Bogda Koczwara AM is a medical oncologist at the Flinders Centre for Innovation in Cancer in Adelaide and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Translating Research into Practice Fellow. Her clinical interests revolve around management of breast cancer, survivorship care, psycho-oncology and supportive care and she has a particular interest in strengthening the interface between specialist and primary care for cancer patients especially in rural Australia. She leads the Survivorship Program at the Flinders Centre for Innovation in Cancer. She is the Lead in Survivorship for the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute Comprehensive Cancer Consortium. Professor Koczwara is the past President of the Clinical Oncology Society of Australia, the peak cancer professional organization in Australia and the past President of the Medical Oncology Group of Australia, the national professional organisation of medical oncologists. She is the initiator and the immediate past Chair of the Australia Asia Pacific Clinical Oncology Research Development, a collaborative of international cancer organizations aimed at improving cancer research capacity in Australia and Asia Pacific. Dr Alex Menzies, BSc(Med), MBBS, FRACP, is a medical oncologist and senior research fellow at the Melanoma Institute Australia, Royal North Shore Hospital, and The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia. He graduated with honours from the University of New South Wales in 2003, and completed specialist training in medical oncology at Westmead Hospital in 2011. In 2012, Dr Menzies commenced postgraduate research exploring biomarkers of response and resistance to targeted therapy in melanoma. He has been an investigator on multiple phase I-III clinical trials in melanoma, and continues both clinical and translational research.
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Associate Professor Linda Mileshkin is a medical oncologist and clinical researcher with a particular interest in the treatment of gynaecological and lung cancers, as well as the supportive care of people affected by cancer. She also runs the only specialist Carcinoma of Unknown Primary (CUP) clinic at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Mebourne. She is currently involved in multiple clinical research projects involving people with lung and gynaecological cancers, and CUP, as well as phase I trials in multiple tumor types. Associate Professor Mileshkin is the Chair of the Research Advisory Committee for the Australia New Zealand Gynaecological Oncology Group, and also a member of the board for this group. Her current research focuses on early and late phase clinical trials testing novel therapies for cancer; and the supportive care of people affected by cancer. Associate Professor Phillip Parente trained at Monash University graduating with First Class Honours in 1993. He completed training in medical oncology in 2001 and completed a 2 year Fellowship in Immunology and Melanoma at Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research at Austin. Initially he worked as a medical oncologist at both Eastern Health and Austin Health. His current role is Director of Cancer Services Eastern Health. His main areas of interest are genitourinary cancers, lung cancers and melanoma and he is considered a clinical lead in these areas of oncology. With respect to oncology research he is principal investigator of numerous trials in his areas of interest. This has translated to numerous publications and presentations at local and international oncological conferences. He often gives presentations on his areas of interests to trainees and peers. Associate Professor Parente has a particular interest in teaching and training. He has been a Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Medicine, Monash University since 2002. He is on the National Examining Panel for the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) and Chair of the Specialist Advisory Committee for Medical Oncology for the RACP. He is also an executive committee member of Medical Oncology Group of Australia.
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Professor Danny Rischin is the Co-Director of the Division of Cancer Medicine and Head of the Department of Medical Oncology at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne. He is a Professor of Medicine in the Sir Peter MacCallum Department of Oncology and the Department of Medicine at the University of Melbourne. He graduated from Monash University (MBBS Hons) in Melbourne and completed his internal medicine and medical oncology training in Melbourne and Toronto. He was awarded a Doctor of Medicine from Monash University for his thesis on New approaches to chemoradiation in loco-regionally advanced cancers of the Head and Neck Since 2011 he has been an Associate Editor of the Journal of Clinical Oncology, having previously been a member of the Journal’s editorial board. Professor Rischin’s major clinical and research interests are in head and neck and gynaecologic cancers. He was a member of the Trans-Tasman Radiation Oncology Group (TROG) scientific committee 1999–2014, Chair of the Australian and New Zealand Gynaecologic Oncology Group (ANZGOG) Research Advisory Committee 2002–2010, and remains on the ANZGOG Board. He has been the principal or co-principal investigator on numerous head and neck cancer trials, including several trials run under the auspices of TROG. He has published over 200 original manuscripts, editorials and book chapters with a major focus on clinical trials, chemoradiation, hypoxia targeting therapy and biomarkers in head and neck cancer. Associate Professor Sabe Sabesan is the Clinical Dean of the Northern Clinical Training Network-Townsville (James Cook University and Townsville Health and Hospital Services) and the Director of the Department of Medical Oncology at the Townsville Cancer Centre, Townsville Hospital, Queensland. He developed and established the Townsville Teleoncology Network (TTN) and the Tropical Centre for Telehealth Practice and Research in North Queensland to decrease the disparity in access to specialist care faced by rural and remote Australians. Under the TTN and the Telehealth Centre, he has developed and implemented various telesupervision models for medical
MOGA Annual Scientific Meeting
training, remote chemotherapy supervision model for rural chemotherapy administration (Queensland Remote Chemotherapy Supervision model-QReCS), and shared care models with general practitioners or cancer care closer to homes. Published results of the evaluation of various aspects of the teleoncology model led to further improvement of these models. As the current Chair of the Regional and Rural Group of the Clinical Oncology Group of Australia (COSA) and the COSA Network of Directors of Regional Cancer Centres, he is facilitating the development of the COSA teleoncology guidelines. His steering committee memberships include Queensland clinical senate and state-wide rural and remote clinical networks. Professor John Seymour is a clinical haematologist and CoDirector of the Division of Cancer Medicine, at the Peter MacCallum Centre in Melbourne, Australia. He received his MB, BS degrees from the University of Melbourne in 1987, pursued training in haematology including a fellowship at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, from which he received their Distinguished Alumnus award in 2011. He also completed PhD studies at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. Professor Seymour is a member of several national and international scientific committees including, Cancer Australia Advisory Groups, the Scientific Advisory Committee for the International Conference on Malignant Lymphoma, Medical Advisory Board of the Lymphoma Coalition, and the Board of Directors of the International Extranodal Lymphoma Study Group. He is the immediate ex-Chair of the major national clinical trials co-operative group in haematologic malignancies, the Australasian Leukaemia and Lymphoma Group. He is a frequent invited speaker nationally and internationally, is a member of numerous professional societies, and is the Editor-inChief of Leukemia and Lymphoma and on the editorial boards of the, British Journal of Haematology, and Leukemia Research. He has also authored 15 book chapters, ∼400 peer reviewed publications (which have been cited more than 13000 times), and ∼600 conference abstracts. Actively involved in research, Professor Seymour has received more than AUD$8.3 million of competitive grant funding in the last 5 years and is the national study chair for 12 ongoing national or international clinical trials.
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National Speakers
Associate Professor Ben Solomon MBBS, PhD, FRACP is a medical oncologist at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Colorado he returned to Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in 2006 where he practices as a medical oncologist with a focus on clinical and translational research in lung cancer, head and neck cancer and phase I studies of novel anticancer therapies. He has been involved in the clinical development of crizotinib and other targeted therapies extending from the phase I study through to phase III studies. Dr Christopher Steer is a medical oncologist working at Border Medical Oncology in Albury Wodonga. He is the Chair of the Geriatric Oncology Interest Group of the Clinical Oncology Society of Australia (COSA). He is actively involved in the International Society of Geriatric Oncology (SIOG) and is currently Convener of the Annual Scientific Meeting in Prague in November 2015. He is an editorial board member of the Journal of Geriatric Oncology. Dr Steer is the current President of the Private Cancer Physicians of Australia (PCPA) and served as a member of the executive (honorary treasurer) of the Medical Oncology Group of Australia (MOGA) from 2009–2014. He is a member of the MOGA and PCPA Cancer Drugs Working Group. He is a principal investigator at the Border Medical Oncology Research Unit (BMORU). The BMORU has been recognized for innovation in clinical research particularly in delivering care to a rural and regional population. Dr Steer has led a pilot project of supportive care in older adults with cancer with funding from Cancer Australia. Professor Martin Stockler is Professor of Cancer Medicine and Clinical Epidemiology at The University of Sydney, Consultant Medical Oncologist at Concord and Royal Prince Alfred Hospitals, and Co-Director of Oncology at the National Health and
Medical Research Council Clinical Trials Centre. After internal medicine training at the Prince of Wales and Prince Henry Hospitals, and medical oncology training at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital all in Sydney, he spent 3 years in Canada doing a clinical research fellowship at the Princess Margaret Hospital and a Masters in Clinical Epidemiology at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on improving quality of life, survival, prognostication, and doctor-patient communication for those affected by cancer, particularly those arising from genitourinary, breast, gynaecologic, and lung primaries. His clinical focus is genitourinary cancer. Dr Constantine Tam is an academic haematologist at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, where he conducts research programs in the field of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). Dr Tam graduated in 1998 from the University of Melbourne, dual trained in haematology and haematopathology, and completed a Leukemia Fellowship at the MD Anderson Cancer Center as well as a research Doctorate of Medicine at the University of Melbourne. Dr Tam ran the CLL trials program St Vincent’s Hospital until 2012, when he was recruited to Peter MacCallum to lead the development program for novel agents including lenalidomide, ibrutinib, ABT199, IPI-145, CTL-019 and BGB-3111. Dr Tam participates extensively in clinical research, being a scientific advisory council member of the Australasian Leukemia and Lymphoma Group (where he is Chair of Myeloproliferative Diseases and Supportive Care); he is a member of multiple international working groups including the CLL Global US-European Alliance, International Workshop for Waldenstrom Macroglobulinemia and the Hairy Cell Research Consortium. Since 2012, Dr Tam has received over $5.7 million in competitive grant or industry funding, either as Chief or Associate Investigator. As of December 2014, he has authored 94 papers, with a total of 1305 Web of ScienceTM citations. In 2013, Dr Tam was awarded the Herman Clinical Fellowship for Translational Cancer Research from the University of Melbourne.
