Invited Speakers

International Keynote Speaker (Thomas Ashworth Orator)
Associate Professor Scott Kopetz, MD PhD
University of Texas and MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, USA

Department of Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology, Division of Cancer Medicine

Dr Scott Kopetz received his medical degree from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, USA, after an undergraduate degree in Electrical and Biomedical Engineering at Vanderbilt University, USA. He obtained his residency training in Internal Medicine at Duke University Medical Center, USA, followed by a medical oncology fellowship at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, USA.

Dr Kopetz is currently Deputy Chair of the Department of Gastrointestinal (GI) Medical Oncology and Program Leader of the GI Program of the Cancer Center Support Grant at UTMDACC. He serves as Chair of the Colon Cancer Task Force, and is Vice-Chair for Colon Cancer in the NSABP/RTG/GOG (NRG) Cooperative Group. Dr. Kopetz is a leader of the GI Cancer Center Support Grant at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center and the Colorectal Cancer Moonshot, a multi- disciplinary effort to improve the survival of patients with this disease beyond incremental advances.

Dr Kopetz has developed a translational and clinical trial programme in BRAF-mutated colorectal cancer, which has resulted in addition of combination therapy with a BRAF inhibitor to the current treatment guidelines. He co-led the clinical trial resulting in the FDA-approval of nivolumab for mismatch repair deficient tumors. He is also an innovator in the development and implementation of circulating tumour DNA into clinical management, including interrogation of mechanisms of resistance, evaluation of minimal residual disease, and integration into clinical trial designs.
International Keynote Speaker
Professor Raghu Kalluri, MD, PhD
University of Texas and MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, USA

Professor and Chairman, Department of Cancer Biology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
RE Bob Smith Distinguished Chair for Cancer Research
CPRIT Scholar
Director, Metastasis Research Center, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Director, NCI T32 Cancer Biology Training Program, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

Professor Raghu Kalluri received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of Kansas Medical Center and his M.D. degree from Brown University Medical School. Dr. Kalluri was a Postdoctoral Fellow and a Research Associate at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School and performed research in areas of tissue injury/repair and regeneration. In 1997 he moved to Harvard Medical School as Assistant Professor of Medicine and as a faculty based in the Department of Medicine at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Dr. Kalluri was named Associate Professor and the Director of the Center for Matrix Biology in 2000, and in 2006 he earned the title Chief of the Division of Matrix Biology and was appointed as a tenured Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He held appointments in the Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at HMS, Harvard MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Harvard Stem Cell Institute, and was a Research Fellow of the HMS Peabody Society. Dr. Kalluri received mentorship and teaching awards from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, and he also received several research excellence awards for his work on tissue damage/regeneration and cancer progression.

In 2012 Dr. Kalluri moved to The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center as Professor and Chairman of the Department of Cancer Biology and Director of the Metastasis Research Center, and he currently holds the RE Bob Smith Distinguished Chair for Cancer Research. Dr. Kalluri’s research had led to seminal discoveries in the area of tissue injury/regeneration, exosomes biology and cancer biology, and his work has led to several issued patents. He serves as an advisor to biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies and has co-founded five biotechnology companies. Dr. Kalluri has trained 88 postdoctoral fellows, 13 graduate students, 61 undergraduate students; sixty of his trainees hold academic positions around the world, while many others work in the biotech/pharma industry, philanthropic organizations/foundations, investment banking, and science/technology consultants. He serves on science and health advisory panels in the USA and European Union, and on the editorial boards of several academic journals representing biology and medicine. He is the Fellow of American Society of Clinical Investigation and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Kalluri’s research laboratory is broadly interested in the study of cell and tissue microenvironment and its impact on cancer progression and metastasis. He has published over 300 peer-reviewed manuscripts, and he has an h-index of 127 with 63,978 lifetime citations.
International Keynote Speaker
Dr Cloud Paweletz, PhD
Head Translational Research Laboratory, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, USA

​Dr. Paweletz is head of the Translational Research Laboratory (TRL) of the Belfer Institute for Applied Cancer Science at Dana Faber Cancer Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He joined from Merck & Co., Inc., where he most recently served as principal scientist, externalization lead, and proteomics site lead for the Department of Molecular Biomarkers at the Merck Research Laboratory in Boston. At Merck, Dr. Paweletz successfully built platforms to look at disease biomarkers in body fluids and oversaw research activities spanning the spectrum from early-stage discovery to the clinic. Prior to that, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Physiology at the Uniformed Services University School of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland and a research fellow in the Laboratory of Pathology at the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Paweletz earned his PhD with honors from Georgetown University and his Bachelor of Science Degree from Baldwin Wallace College.
Dr Paweletz's travel for this meeting has been generously sponsored by Bio Rad Inc.
National Keynote Speaker
Professor Helen Rizos, PhD
Macquarie University, Sydney Australia

Head of Department, Biomedical Sciences, Department of Biomedical Sciences
Professor, Cancer Research, Department of Biomedical Sciences
 
Professor Helen Rizos is a cancer cell biologist with an international reputation in the field of melanoma senescence, tumour suppressor proteins and oncoproteins. Her work combines genetic analyses of melanoma tumours with functional molecular and cell biology in order to understand the role and regulation of genes and cellular pathways that influence the development and therapeutic response of melanoma. She worked at the Westmead Institute for Cancer Research for almost 20 years before joining the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at Macquarie University in 2014. In 2017, Professor Rizos and her team won the Wildfire Highly Cited Publication Award from Cancer Institute NSW's Premier Awards for Outstanding Cancer Research.
Making an IMPACT Keynote Speaker
Dr Rishu Agarwal, MBBS FRACP
Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Dr Rishu Agarwal is a Consultant Molecular Haematologist at Austin Health & Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. She has been conducting research at the Peter Mac with Prof Sarah-Jane Dawson and  has discovered a genetic mutation which may lead to a new combination drug treatment to be tested in forthcoming clinical trials in Mantle Cell Lymphoma (MCL) patients. She is also lead author on a dynamic molecular monitoring study that has revealed that SWI-SNF mutations mediate resistance to ibrutinib plus venetoclax in mantle cell lymphoma that has been recently published in Nature Medicine.

This is the inaugural "Making an IMPACT"  speaker category to recognize Australian research that has potential for significant clinical impact.
National Speakers
Professor Sudha Rao                                       Canberra University, Canberra
Associate Professor Kathy Fuller                University of Western Australia, Perth
Associate Professor Michael Michael        Flinders University, Adelaide
Dr Pei Ding                                                          Ingham Institute & Liverpool Hospital, Sydney
Dr Ben Blyth                                                        Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne
Dr Xi Zhang                                                          Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane
Dr Carlos Salomon Gallo                              UQ Centre for Clinical Research, Brisbane
Dr Juliana Bark                                                  Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane
Associate Professor Therese Becker,        Ingham Institute, Sydney
Dr Bing Yu                                                         Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney
Dr Dineika Chandrananda                              Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne
Associate Professor Catherine Hyland.     Australian Red Cross Blood Bank, Brisbane
Dr Russell Diefenbach                                     Macquarie University, Sydney
Dr Sonia Yip                                                         NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre, Sydney
Dr Omid Faridani                                             UNSW & Garvan Institute, Sydney
Dr Daniel Brungs                                             Wollongong Hospital & IHMRI, Wollongong
 
Industry Speakers
Dr Chaithanya Chelakkot                             Genobio Corp. USA
Dr Joe Daniel                                                   Thermo Fisher Scientific