I work as a diagnostic Paediatric Pathologist for children at the Randwick Campus and as a Clinical Research Fellow at Children's Cancer Institute. My undergraduate medical studies and PhD, characterising methotrexate resistance in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, were undertaken at UNSW. This was followed by formal training in Anatomical Pathology leading to Fellowship of the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia. My areas of...view more
I work as a diagnostic Paediatric Pathologist for children at the Randwick Campus and as a Clinical Research Fellow at Children's Cancer Institute. My undergraduate medical studies and PhD, characterising methotrexate resistance in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, were undertaken at UNSW. This was followed by formal training in Anatomical Pathology leading to Fellowship of the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia. My areas of interest comprise paediatric tumour pathology, including both extracranial solid tumours and brain tumours; general paediatric surgical pathology including Hirschsprung disease; and paediatric gastroenterology.
My Qualifications
BSc (Med) Hons, MBBS UNSW
PhD, UNSW
FRCPA
My Research Activities
1. Histopathological assessment of genetically engineered mouse models of paediatric cancer, in particular the TH-MYCN mouse model of neuroblastoma.
2. Application of Anatomical Pathology to Paediatric Precision Oncology.
(i) Histopathological assessment of patient derived tumour xenografts in immunodeficient mice prior to utilising the xenografts for clinical decision making. Accurate morphologic assessment ensures the xenografts resemble the child's original tumour. This permits exclusion of growths in mice which mimic a tumour such as proliferation of EBV-infected cells.
(ii) Cytopathological assessment of patient-derived or xenograft-derived tumour cells prior to submitting the cells to a high throughput drug screen assay. This ensure the cells examined in the drug screening assay are the patient's tumour cells. This permits exclusion of non-neoplastic cells, such as fibroblasts, which mimic tumour cells.
3. Establishment of a series of tissue microarrays from archived formalin-fixed paraffin embedded samples from a range of paediatric solid tumours. This will facilitate assessment of expression of protein biomarkers in a range of paediatric tumours.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4092-2347