Sarah-Jane Dawson

Biography
Professor Sarah-Jane Dawson is a clinician-scientist. She obtained her medical degree from the University of Melbourne in 1998, and trained as a medical oncologist in Melbourne, Australia. She completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge, UK. Following postdoctoral studies at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, she returned to Melbourne in 2014 to head the Molecular Biomarkers and Translational Genomics Laboratory at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. She also holds a joint appointment with the Centre of Cancer Research at The University of Melbourne (since 2016) and currently holds a CSL Centenary Fellowship (2018-2022). She is a fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences and was recipient of the Jian Zhou Medal in recognition of translational medical science in 2020. Her current research interests are focused on the development of noninvasive blood-based biomarkers ('liquid biopsies') for clinical application, including early detection, risk stratification and disease monitoring in cancer management.

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Talk
CtDNA for precision medicine: Going beyond the cancer genome
Cell-free circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) has proven to be an important biomarker for monitoring adaptive changes to cancer therapies. I will provide an overview of ctDNA approaches that are providing an opportunity to track both genomic evolution and transcriptional changes in real-time to improve our understanding of the mechanisms leading to molecular resistance in cancer.