Professor Ron Firestein, NHMRC Leadership Fellow

There is an urgent need for new and more precisely targeted medicines to treat childhood cancers. My work uses functional and integrated genomic approaches to understanding the basic underpinnings of cancer and identifying treatment options to target them.

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Associate Professor Ron Firestein

Areas of interest

Bowel cancer Childhood cancer Necrotising enterocolitis (NEC)

Research group

Cancer Genetics and Functional Genomics

Biography

Professor Ron Firestein is the Head of the Centre for Cancer Research at Hudson Institute of Medical Research, and Co-lead and Head of Discovery Research of the Victorian Paediatric Cancer Consortium. He leads the Cancer Genetics and Functional Genomics research group, and is Head of the Next Generation Precision Medicine program. He also holds the role of Deputy Director of Hudson Institute.

Prof Firestein is a physician scientist double board certified in Pathology (Anatomic and Molecular Genetics) and his research focuses on identifying new targets and developing therapies for solid tumour malignancies.

Prof Firestein earned his BA from the University of Pennsylvania in Biology and his MD/PhD from Stanford University as part of the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP). He completed residency in Anatomic Pathology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and fellowships in molecular pathology and cancer genetics at Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute.

Prior to joining the Hudson Institute in August 2015 as head of the Centre for Cancer Research, Prof Firestein led a basic research lab at Genentech Inc., where he focused on developing integrative genomic technologies to identify new therapeutic targets in solid tumor malignancies. His scientific work has resulted in peer-reviewed high impact publications (including Nature, Cancer Cell, Cell, and Journal of Clinical Investigation) as well as ten patents.

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Publication highlights