Prof Deborah White, SAHMRI

Prof Deborah White | Director, Cancer Program | SAHMRI

Genomics and precision medicine in Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL): Significantly increasing both knowledge and complexity

ALL is a disease that impacts all age groups. It is the most common childhood malignancy, and despite therapeutic improvement remains the leading cause of non-traumatic death in this age group. Next Generation Sequencing has enabled the interrogation of ALL genomes taking our knowledge of this disease from 2 subtypes to >30. This brings with it better diagnoses and therapeutic triage, but also adds significant clinical complexity. In this talk I will outline the approach of my group to exploring ALL in the clinical and pre-clinical setting, describing both genomic and systemic interrogations that are being undertaken to improve disease understanding and short and long-term therapeutic efficacy.

Speaker bio:

Professor Deborah White PhD FFSc (RCPS) is the Director of the Cancer Program and Deputy Precision Medicine Theme Leader at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI) in Adelaide. She is a NHMRC Research Fellow, a Beat Cancer Prinicpal Research Fellow and Senior Principal Research Fellow with SAHMRI. She is a Professor in Health and Medical Sciences, and in the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Adelaide.

Prof White’s research focus is genomics and rationally targeted therapies in Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL) and she has presented more than 170 papers at scientific meetings, and authored more than 120 scientific publications.

Prof White is the National Flagship Lead for the ALL Stream of Australian Genomics, and SA scientific lead for Zero Children’s Cancer. She is an active member of the National Health & Medical Research Council (NHMRC) being a member of a number of key committees.

Prof White has received a number of awards: Australian Society for Medical Research (ASMR) Leading Light (2014), the University of Adelaide James McWha medal (2016), the prestigious NHMRC Research Excellence Award (2019) and the Beat Cancer Women in Leadership Award (2020).

 

Hosted by: Prof Eduardo Eyras