Associate Professor Mandy Ballinger

Associate Professor Mandy Ballinger is Deputy Director of the UNSW Centre for Molecular Oncology, Leader of the Genetic Cancer Risk Group at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research and Head of Cohorts for the Australian Genomic Cancer Medicine Centre (Omico).  Her clinical training includes a Masters in Genetic Counselling. A/Prof Ballinger’s research focus is to define heritable cancer risk and inform future clinical risk management through large patient cohort studies.  These include the International Sarcoma Kindred Study, the Genetic Cancer Risk in the Young Study and the Surveillance studies in Multi-Organ Cancer prone syndromes (adult and paediatric). A/Prof Ballinger’s work has identified novel sarcoma predisposition pathways.  Her research into the risk management of Li Fraumeni syndrome, a rare, multi-organ high cancer risk disorder, has changed clinical practice nationally and internationally and has recently led to an Australian Medicare item number for whole body MRI for early cancer detection.  A/Prof Ballinger has overseen patient recruitment to the Molecular Screening and Therapeutics study and the Cancer Screening Program of the Precision Oncology Screening Platform Enabling Clinical Trials study, facilitating tumour comprehensive genomic profiling for >23,000 Australian cancer patients. A/Prof Ballinger has created powerful tools in these cohorts for both discovery and translation, and has well developed skills in clinical cancer genetics, cohort research, and clinical interventions.  Her work has been internationally recognised with the 2023 Liddy Shriver Early Career Research Award. A/Prof Ballinger's goal is to utilize these large cohorts as vehicles for intervention to change practice and improve outcomes for families.