My Expertise
Professor Thomas is a medical oncologist specialising in precision medicine, and in sarcomas.
Keywords
Fields of Research (FoR)
Genomics, Cancer geneticsSEO tags
Biography
Dr Thomas is a National Health and Medical Research Council L3 Investigator at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, as well as CEO of Omico, Australia's Genomic Cancer Medicine Centre. He undertook his basic training in medicine at the University of Melbourne (1982-88), followed by a PhD at the same university (1992-95), and obtained his Fellowship in Medical Oncology from the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in 1997. He then...view more
Dr Thomas is a National Health and Medical Research Council L3 Investigator at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, as well as CEO of Omico, Australia's Genomic Cancer Medicine Centre. He undertook his basic training in medicine at the University of Melbourne (1982-88), followed by a PhD at the same university (1992-95), and obtained his Fellowship in Medical Oncology from the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in 1997. He then undertook post-doctoral studies at Harvard Medical School (1998-2000), before returning to St Vincents Hospital Department of Medicine in 2001. He then moved his lab to the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre (2004-14). During this time he established the Australasian Sarcoma Study Group, the International Sarcoma Kindred Study and onTrac@PeterMac. He moved to the Garvan Institute in 2014, taking up Directorship of the Kinghorn Cancer Centre (2014-21) and Head of the Cancer Division of the Garvan Institute (2014-20). He established Omico, a non-profit national oncology platform, in 2018. He was President of the Connective Tissue Oncology Society in 2018.
My Qualifications
1988: Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery (University of Melbourne)
1997: Doctorate of Philosophy (University of Melbourne)
1997: Fellowship of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians.
My Awards
1998-2002: Neil Hamilton Fairley National Health and Medical Research Council Fellowship
2000: John Taplin Fellow, Harvard Medical School.
2002: Arnott Fellowship, Royal Australasian College of Physicians.
2003-2007: RD Wright NHMRC Career Development Award
2003-2004: Puzey fellowship, University of Melbourne
2006-2010: Edna and Murray Dunn Award
2007-2010: Victorian Cancer Agency, Clinician Researcher Fellowship
2008: Sam Sciacca Visiting Fellow, Queensland Cancer Council
2009: NHMRC Ten of the Best. Fellowship elected as one of the 10 best NHMRC investments for 2009
2011: Victorian Cancer Agency, Clinician Researcher Fellowship
2012-2015: NH&MRC Senior Research Fellow Level B
2014: Raine Visiting Professorship, University of Western Australia
2016-22: NH&MRC Principal Research Fellow
2018:David Danks Lecturer, Murdoch Children’s Medical Research Institute
Kidson Lecturer, Queensland Institute of Medical Research
President, Connective Tissue Oncology Society
Named honor: Desai Thomas Award for Excellence in Sarcoma Research (inaugurated 2018)
2020: Herman Suit lecturer, CTOS.
2021:PWC Pearls Series: Emerging leaders in Sydney’s business community
My Research Activities
As a clinician-scientist, I apply genomic technologies to the understanding and management of cancer. I founded the Australasian Sarcoma Study Group, which has enrolled over 1,000 patients onto research studies since 2008, and provided over $1.1M of funding through 18 grants to young researchers. I founded and lead the International Sarcoma Kindred Study, the largest ever conducted study of genetic factors in sarcoma, now recruiting from 23 centres in the US, UK, France, India, South Korea, New Zealand and Australia. I led the first international study of denosumab in Giant Cell Tumor of bone, leading to FDA, EMA and TGA approval of this agent for the management of this disorder. I also co-led a meta-analysis of whole body MRI screening for patients with Li-Fraumeni syndrome, changing clinical practice guidelines from the NCCN, AACR and EviQ in Australia. I am the CEO of Omico, a Federally-funded national precision oncology platform which focuses on using genomics to develop biomarker-dependent clinical trials infrastructure, and genetically stratified risk management. Omico has enabled more than 5,000 Australians with advanced cancer to access genomic profiling, and matched targeted therapies. He has over 230 research publications, including first or last author papers in Science, Cancer Cell, Molecular Cell, JAMA Oncology, Lancet Oncology, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Cancer Discovery, Journal of Clinical Investigation and Nature Communications. My work has been cited more than 10,000 times, with an H-index of 52 (September 2022, Web of Science).
Publications
ORCID as entered in ROS
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2527-5428