Paul Ekert

I am a clinician scientist, with 25 years experience as a consultant paediatrician and oncology research. I am appointed at the Children’s Cancer Institute, to lead the Translational Tumour Biology group, and cross-appointed at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) to drive collaborative projects that link basic research with the discovery of novel therapeutic targets and genetic understanding of paediatric cancers. In 2014 I was appointed as Group Leader of Cancer Research at The Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. I built a new molecular cancer research program linked to the clinical service, with 2 overarching aims. The first was to establish a research program of RNA sequencing of patient samples, focused primarily but not exclusively, on childhood Acute lymphoblastic Leukaemia. I used RNA-sequencing as a tool to discover the driving genetic lesions, which were then modelled to explore their biology. The second aim was, as a lead investigator in the national and local initiatives in paediatric personalised medicine, to make these precision medicine trials available to the paediatric cancer population, and to expand our research portfolio to encompass cancer genomics in paediatric oncology. In 2019 I took up a role as a Group Leader at the Children’s Cancer Institute (CCI), with cross-appointments at the Peter MacCallum Cancer and Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. I lead the Translational Tumour Biology group which explores the molecular biology and therapeutic targeting of genomic discoveries from the Zero Childhood Cancer patient cohort – the national child cancer personalized medicine program. This involves the development of models to investigate the functional molecular consequences of the genetic changes found in the patients, and to determine how they might best be therapeutically targeted. cancer, biology, cell biology, genomics, apoptosis, oncogenes