Paul Ekert 36th Lorne Cancer Conference 2024

Paul Ekert

Associate Professor Paul Ekert is the Group Leader of the Translational Tumour Biology and the Co-Director of the Personalised Medicine Theme at the Children’s Cancer Institute, UNSW. Professor Ekert is also cross appointed at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in the Cancer Immunology Program. His research interests include the molecular biology and therapeutic targeting of genomic drivers in paediatric cancer, with a focus on fusion oncogenes. This involves the development of new models to investigate the functional molecular consequences of these drivers and determining how they can be therapeutically targeted. Professor Ekert’s research also focuses on the immunological landscape of paediatric cancer and the implications this has for immunotherapies. Professor Ekert has been a contributor and Investigator on the ZERO Childhood Cancer program – Australia’s national trial of precision medicine in paediatric cancer - since its inception. He has helped develop the genomic analysis platforms and has a major role in the curation team that analyses the genomic data for clinically actionable targets. Paul did his medical degree at the University of Melbourne and then trained as a paediatrician at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne. He did a clinical fellowship at the Hospital for Sick Kids in Toronto, Canada. In 1996, he returned to Australia to work with Professor David Vaux at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute. Since that time, he has held laboratory head and Group Leader positions at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, before joining the Children’s Cancer Institute.