Speakers

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Alexander C.J. van Akkooi, MD, PhD was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, USA. He has both American and Dutch nationalities.

He studied medicine at the Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, where he gained his MD title in 2008. During his surgical specialty training (2009-2014), he was awarded his PhD cum laude in 2011 on the thesis: “Sentinel Node Tumor Load Assessment in Melanoma: Dilemmas and Clinical Management”.

From 2015 – 2021 he was a staff consultant surgical oncologist at the Netherlands Cancer Institute – Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (NKI) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where he chaired the Melanoma and Skin Cancer Centre. He is the immediate past-Chairman of the EORTC (European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer) Melanoma Group.

He has served on multiple international committees, such as ASCO and ESMO. Prof. Dr. van Akkooi published over 225 peer reviewed papers (H index 39) in some high impact journals (i.e. New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Lancet Oncol, Cell, Nature Med) and has presented at numerous (international) meetings. He joined the Melanoma Institute Australia (MIA) in 2022 as Chair of Melanoma Surgical Oncology.

He is a clinical academic and his research work focuses on staging and treatment of melanoma, sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB), locoregional therapies, adjuvant and neo-adjuvant strategies. He is also a Merkel Cell Carcinoma (MCC) expert.

Fran is a Medical Oncologist based at the Mater Hospital in North Sydney. Her main area of practice is in Breast Cancer Care. She is a Professor at the University of Sydney where she is the current Director of the Pam McLean Centre. Her experience in communication research and training spans 25 years, working with clinicians, actors and film, as well as creating opportunities for medical teams to expand their skills. Her teaching has been enriched by singing in a choir, studying rugby, The Lord of The Rings movies, and her many trips to New Zealand. And she does have a crystal ball.

Dr. Contreras is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anatomic Pathology, Division of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine with a joint appointment in the Department of Translational Molecular Pathology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston since 2014. He is board certified by the American Board of Pathology and specializes in breast pathology. Dr. Contreras received his MD/PhD from Baylor College of Medicine, Pathology residency training at the University of Chicago, and breast pathology fellowship at Baylor College of Medicine. Before joining M.D. Anderson, he was an Assistant Professor at Baylor College of Medicine. In addition, he currently serves as the Patient Safety and Quality Officer for the Division of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and as Executive Director for Pathology for the M.D. Anderson Cancer Network. His research interests include the simultaneous multispectral imaging of biomarkers and immune cells in breast cancers and the role of HER-2 in breast cancer progression.

Dr. Sarah Diermeier is a Senior Lecturer and Rutherford Discovery Fellow in the Department of Biochemistry, University of Otago, since 2018. Sarah completed her undergraduate and PhD studies in Biochemistry in Germany on cancer epigenetics and genomics. In 2013, she joined Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York to investigate the potential of long non-coding RNAs as new therapeutic targets in breast cancer. Her work in the USA was part of an industry collaboration with Ionis Pharmaceuticals and resulted in the generation of new IP for RNA therapeutics in oncology. Sarah is also the Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Amaroq Therapeutics, a new venture-backed oncology drug development company. Amaroq serves as translational vehicle to bridge the gap between Sarah’s academic research and the clinical development of new cancer therapeutics.

Nadine Gray hails from the small coastal town of Ōpōtiki in the Eastern Bay of Plenty. She grew up amongst a whānau of nurses and teachers, including her mother who was the first Māori Nurse Practitioner in Aotearoa, Janet Maloney-Moni.

Nadine is a registered comprehensive nurse of more than 20 years with advanced practice in adult emergency nursing, and most recently clinical nurse specialist supporting whānau Māori in cancer care pathways at Capital and Coast District. Her nursing career also includes nursing education, Māori health strategy and policy, and Māori nursing workforce development.

Nadine’s was appointed to the new role of Chief Nursing Officer Te Aka Whai Ora in March 2023. Prior to commencing this role, she was Clinical Chief Advisor Nursing at Manatū Hauora and Principal Advisor Nursing at Te Aka Whai Ora with responsibilities for co-leading nursing workforce development in partnership with Te Whatu Ora. Nadine is passionate about enabling strategies and quality initiatives that prioritise and lead change towards future-focused models of care that ensure Māori health needs are met. Further, to grow the capacity and capability of advanced nursing practice.

Ross Ihaka (Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa, Rangitāne) grew up in South Auckland, Rarotonga, and Northland. He attended the University of Auckland and obtained BSc(Hons) and MSc degrees in Mathematics and Statistics. After graduating from Auckland Ross obtained a PhD in Statistics from the University of California at Berkeley. He then taught for a number of years at Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before returning to the University of Auckland.

Ross's primary research interest has been in designing and implementing software for carrying out statistical data analysis. As part of his research, he implemented a number of computer environments for doing statistics. The best known of these, which he created jointly with Robert Gentleman (then also at the University of Auckland), is called R. It is now very widely used throughout the world and is, arguably, the most fully featured statistics system in existence. It shows up regularly on the list of the "ten most popular computing languages."

Ross's other interests include applied statistics, forecasting, and graphics. In particular, understanding how information is represented in and decoded from graphs.

Professor Jacquie Kidd (Ngāpuhi) has a clinical background in nursing and almost two decades of expertise in qualitative, whānau-focused Māori health equity research. Her research is usually based in a co-designed kaupapa Māori approach in the areas of community-focused solutions to health inequities and organisational health literacy. She has led several large research projects including Health literacy for Māori in palliative care; Oranga Tū: prostate cancer for tāne Māori; and Hā Ora: the community phase within a larger project to improve early diagnosis of lung cancer for Māori. Her current work includes lung cancer screening for Māori, whānau hauora assessment in the cancer pathway, and anti-racism praxis in healthcare.

Photo credit: John Cowpland

Ben is a Medical Oncologist at Te Toka Tumai | Auckland Hospital. He looks after people with gastrointestinal cancers and neuroendocrine tumours (NETs). He is foundation co-chair of the Auckland Molecular Tumour Board - a collaboration between the Precision Medicine Initiative at Waipapa Taumata Rau | University of Auckland and Te Puriri o Te Ora | Cancer and Blood Northern at the hospital. He was part of a multidisciplinary team that founded the national Peptide Receptor Radionuclide Therapy (PRRT) service and co-chairs the National NET MDM. He is head of the Department of Oncology at Waipapa Taumata Rau | University of Auckland. This year he is co-convening the AGITG Annual Scientific Meeting in Christchurch on November 13-17^th, and looks forward to seeing you there.

Melissa McLeod (Ngai Tahu) is a public health physician and senior research fellow working at Te Rōpū Rangahau Hauora a Eru Pomare, University of Otago, Wellington.

Melissa's research interests include Māori health, epidemiology, and the investigation and elimination of ethnic health inequalities in Aotearoa/New Zealand.

Dr. Malcolm Mulholland (Ngāti Kahungunu) is a historian and patient advocate. Following the diagnosis of his wife, Wiki, in 2018, they led a campaign to get palbociclib and trastuzumab emtansine funded for advanced breast cancer patients. Following the campaign, Mulholland was approached by a number of patient advocate NGOs to form Patient Voice Aotearoa (PVA) in 2019. Since that time, PVA has been instrumental in delivering over 20 petitions to Parliament, asking for over 50 medicines to be funded for cancers, rare disorders, and chronic illnesses. PVA has been constantly campaigning for Pharmac to be reviewed which led to the first independent review of the agency in its then 27-year history. PVA has also been consistent in asking the Government to substantially increase the agency’s funding. Since the formation of PVA, Pharmac’s budget has increased from $985m to $1.31b. In November 2021, Wiki Mulholland passed away from advanced breast cancer. Mulholland continues to chair PVA and be an outspoken advocate for the funding of more medicines for New Zealand patients.

Prof Catherine Muller-Staumont (MD, PhD) is the head of the “Microenvironment, Cancer and Adipocytes” team at the Institute of Pharmacology and Structural Biology in Toulouse, France. Her team discovered the specific phenotype of adipocytes at close proximity to the tumors, cells that they named “Cancer-Associated Adipocytes” (Dirat et al, Cancer Research, 2011). She demonstrated that adipocytes contribute to cancer progression (mainly breast and prostate cancers) through soluble molecules (chemokines, pro-inflammatory cytokines), extra-cellular matrix molecules and lipid mediators. In addition, most of these effects have been shown to be amplify on obesity conditions.

Mr Rahal was welcomed to Te Aho o Te Kahu on 10 July with a pōwhiri. With over 30 years’ experience in health system leadership. Mr Rahal brings strategic vision to healthcare and government, particularly focusing on performance improvements in management, clinical practice, policy and planning.

Mr Rahal was responsible for establishing Canada’s first cancer system performance program and implementing the national cancer control strategy for Canada among other key roles during a 12-year tenure for Canada’s national cancer control agency.

Mr Rahal is internationally recognised for his work in cancer performance measurement, with over 50 publications on the topics of health care data, quality measurement and cancer system improvement. As well as his deep understanding of equity and how to work with indigenous communities for more effective outcomes. Holding several board member roles internationally and locally, Mr Rahal has informed a substantial amount of cancer projects.

Mr Rahal hopes to bring his skills and expertise to Aotearoa’s cancer system, being involved in Te Aho o Te Kahu’s inception, as the keynote speaker at the Cancer at Crossroads conference in Wellington in 2019. Mr Rahal has already demonstrated his commitment to the Agency’s Kaupapa by being involved in some of the Agency’s working groups and providing specific advice to the quality performance indicators work programme.

On the personal side, Mr. Rahal was born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon and immigrated to Canada with his parents and younger sister in 1985. For most of the years since then, Mr. Rahal lived in and around Toronto, Ontario, Canada’s largest city. Most recently, he lived in the suburb of Burlington with his partner Brenda and his two stepsons, Noah and Jacob, aged 19 and 16, and their Golden Doodle Flo, aged 11. Brenda is an award-winning producer and editor for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s national evening news show. Mr. Rahal has two biological children: Rayan 23 and Tamara 20. He is an avid cyclist (road and gravel, and recently mountain biking) and scuba diver.

David Tipene-Leach, (Ngāti Kere, Ngāti Manuhiri) is Professor of Māori and Indigenous Research at Te Pūkenga, Hawke’s Bay and co-Director of Te Kura I Awarua Rangahau Māori Research Centre. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners having worked for Te Whakatohea Health Centre, Tuhoe Hauora, Ngāti Porou Hauora and Te Taiwhenua o Heretaunga. As a Fellow of the New Zealand College of Public Health Medicine he has worked in mainly academic and research position for University of Auckland, University of Otago and for University of Hawai’i at Manoa.

David Tipene-Leach is a champion for Māori health equity and cultural safety and is widely known for his innovative work in prevention strategies for sudden infant death syndrome and diabetes. More recently he has been looking at the values and wisdom of Indigenous food systems and how mātauranga Māori should underpin pathways that make the food eco-system more robust. He also has a body of Treaty Settlement negotiation work and the archiving of mid-to-late te reo Māori manuscripts of the Repudiation Movement of Hawke’s Bay is a major new late career pursuit.

Dr. Stephen Wong is Head of the Cancer Genomics Translational Research Centre at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. He is a fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia, a recipient of an NHMRC Emerging Leader Fellowship and a Victorian Cancer Agency Mid-Career Fellowship. He oversees the design, development and coordination of multiple translational research projects for both academic and commercial partners using a range of cutting-edge genomic-based methodologies. He has more than 10 years of prior research experience in genomics and molecular biology, as well as conducting multidisciplinary translational research encompassing clinical oncology, computational biology and biostatistics and has led the discovery of novel biomarkers and implementation of diagnostic methods into clinical practice. He has published 50 original articles including in Nature Medicine, Annals of Oncology and Genome Biology. His current research interests include the application of circulating tumour DNA as a non-invasive cancer biomarker.