TOGA Post International Conference Highlights & Satellite Symposium – WCLC/ESMO/ASTRO

A/Prof Prunella Blinman

A/Prof Prunella Blinman is a medical oncologist at Concord Repatriation General Hospital with clinical expertise in managing lung cancers and gastrointestinal cancers. She is a Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Sydney, head of the medical oncology department at Concord Hospital and ex-officio chair of the Medical Oncology Group of Australia.

Dr Maggie Moore

Dr Maggie Moore is a medical oncologist at the Alfred Hospital. She has specific expertise in the treatment of lung cancer as well as in the management of melanoma and breast cancers. She is actively engaged in clinical research across her tumour streams of interest.

A/Prof Chee Lee

Associate Professor Chee Khoon Lee is a thoracic medical oncologist and works as a senior staff specialist at St George and Sutherland Hospitals. He is a clinical lead for the thoracic malignancy program at NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre. He is a recipient of the NHMRC Investigator Grant with research focus on better strategies to personalise treatment and improve outcomes for patients with lung cancers, and novel designs and analyses of results from clinical trials in lung cancers.

Dr Stephen Barnett

Dr Barnett completed his undergraduate training at the University of Melbourne and has received Fellowships from the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in General Surgery and Cardiothoracic Surgery. He completed post Fellowship training in New York at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre, and subsequently in Boston at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital, including appointment as a tutor at Harvard Medical School.

Upon his return from the US in 2010, he pioneered (along with Assoc. Professor Gavin Wright) Australia’s first public hospital program for robotic resection of mediastinal tumours at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. The program has developed over the last few years to include complex anatomic robotic lung resection.

He is currently appointed as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Surgery of the University of Melbourne and as a Consultant Thoracic Surgeon to the Sir Peter McCallum Cancer Centre, Austin, Royal Melbourne, and Western Hospitals.

His interests include neoadjuvant therapy in, segmental resection for and minimally invasive diagnosis and treatment of patients with thoracic malignancy.

A/Prof Harriet Gee

A/Prof Gee is a Radiation Oncologist in the Department of Radiation Oncology, Westmead Hospital, Sydney. She holds both MBBS/B Med Sci (First Class Honours), from the University of Melbourne, and a DPhil in Molecular Oncology from the University of Oxford where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. As well as clinical practice serving patients with thoracic cancer, for which she has undertaken further training at Stanford University, USA, she is actively engaged in translational research. Her work has examined biomarkers in predicting response to radiotherapy and chemotherapy and currently co-leads a research program examining cell death after ablative radiotherapy. A/Prof Gee also regularly teaches both on the medical program at the University of Sydney and the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists (Radiation Oncology).

Dr Tracy Leong

Dr Leong is a clinician-scientist with dual appointments as a Respiratory Physician and Director of Bronchoscopy at Austin Health, and as a Post-doctorate Researcher at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research. Her research interests are in utilising minimally invasive bronchoscopic technology to advance translational research in cancer. She is leading the TRACKER initiative of a national biobank for metastatic lung cancer. She is also heavily engaged in national projects to improve quality of lung cancer care through involvement in LUCAP which is a national lung cancer clinical quality data platform, and the drive to implement a national lung cancer screening program. She is the current President of the Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand (TSANZ) Victoria branch, and is a national TSANZ board member where she is the Director of Australian branches and Director of Lung Cancer.

Dr Malinda Itchins

Dr Malinda Itchins BMedSci, MBBS(Hons1), PhD, FRACP, is a thoracic medical oncologist at Royal North Shore Hospital, GenesisCare, and North Shore Private and early career researcher and senior clinical lecturer with the University of Sydney. In 2020 she graduated from University of Sydney in her doctoral studies investigating drug resistance in ALK-rearranged non-small cell lung cancer both preclinically and clinically. Malinda is a Board Director and the Lung Cancer Chair for the Clinical Oncology of Australia (COSA), and Advanced NSCLC Co-Chair for the Thoracic Oncology Group of Australasia (TOGA) Scientific Committee. She is Primary Investigator on several lung cancer clinical trials and her research focus to date has been in patterns of care, the real-world experience, biomarker exploration and drug resistance in lung cancer. She is passionate about the evolution of precision medicine and equity of access to care in thoracic cancers.

A/Prof Eric Hau

Eric Hau is a radiation oncologist with interest in treating patients with lung and brain cancers. He also has interest in radiation and cancer biology research and clinical trials.

Dr Keryn Davidson

Dr Keryn Davidson is a Neurosurgeon at The Royal North Shore Hospital and North Shore Private Hospital in Sydney Australia.

Keryn has a special interest in:

• Neuro Oncology – Primary and metastatic disease
• Cerebrovascular pathology - Brain aneurysms , Arteriovenous malformations

Keryn completed her Neurosurgery training and obtained her FRACS (Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons) in 2017. Keryn grew up in Queensland and completed her medical school training at The University of Queensland. She went on to complete her internship and residency at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital before commencing Neurosurgical training.

Keryn completed a fellowship year in 2018 at The Royal North Shore Hospital with a focus on open cerebrovascular Neurosurgery including treatment of brain aneurysms and arteriovenous malformations, as well as general Neurosurgery.

Keryn was appointed as the first female Neurosurgeon at the Royal North Shore Hospital in 2019.

She enjoys being involved in registrar, resident and medical student training and teaching. Keryn advocates for equal opportunity and gender and cultural diversity in surgical training. She is the JMO surgical supervisor for Neurosurgery. Keryn is also an examiner with the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, and is on the board of examiners for the junior clinical viva exam.