Correlatives Network

The AMaRC Myeloma Correlatives Network (MCN) represents an international alliance of Correlative science research centres with extensive experience in a broad range of complimentary state-of-the-art laboratory analytical platforms including: genomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, proteomics, immune profiling and disease monitoring.

The establishment of the MCN as an independent advisory committee will allow AMaRC to develop new myeloma trials incorporating these analytical platforms into our clinical trials to explore and better understand the nature of myeloma disease in parallel with the use of novel treatment combinations.

The Correlatives Network team

Professor Chng Wee Joo

Doctor Jason Ross

Professor Geoffrey Hill

Professor Roslyn Kemp

Professor P. Joy Ho

Doctor Kate Vandyke

Professor Roger Reddel

Professor Wendy Erber

Doctor Sridurga Mithraprabhu

Professor Simon Harrison

Professor Chng Wee Joo

Professor Wee Jo Chng, MB ChB, PhD, FRCP (UK), FRCPath (UK), FAMS, is a Yong Loo Lin Professor in Medical Oncology and Vice Dean of Research at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, where he is also a Senior Principal Investigator at the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore. He is concurrently the Director of the National University Cancer Institute, Singapore and the Group Director of Research, at the National University Health System.

Professor Chng currently serves as Executive Director of the Singapore Translational Cancer Consortium. His research focuses on the use of global genomics methods (microarray and sequencing platforms) to study the clinical and biological heterogeneity in haematologic malignancies including acute myeloid leukemia, multiple myeloma and lymphoma. Using these methods, he has identified novel prognostic markers and molecular abnomalities in these malignancies, serving as potential targets for therapy and providing insights into disease pathogenesis and biology. He has strong research interest in risk stratification and clinical trials in myeloma.

Professor Chng is a member of many international professional committees, such as the International Myeloma Working Group and the Asian Myeloma Network. He is also involved in a number of Grant Review Committees, Conference Organising Committees, Advisory Boards and the Steering Committees of Global Clinical Trials. He has authored more than 300 publications in many reputed journals, and actively participates in clinical trials, and has delivered talks at many national and international conferences. He has won multiple awards for his outstanding achievements in translational research both locally and internationally including the NUHS Research Excellence Award, the International Myeloma Foundation's Brian GM Durie Outstanding Achievement Award, the National Medical Excellence Outstanding Clinician Scientist Award, the National Medical Research Council Senior Translational Research (STaR) Award, the National University of Singapore Young Research Award, and the Celgene Future Leaders in Haematology Award.

Doctor Jason Ross

Dr Jason Ross is a Principal Research Scientist in the Integrated Diagnostics group at CSIRO. There he leads projects developing precision diagnostics to address critical clinical gaps. Broadly, Dr. Ross' research interests are in epigenomics, in vitro diagnostic development and bioinformatics, with cancer, trauma and obesity the particular areas of application.

Professor Geoffrey Hill

Geoff Hill is a medical graduate of the Univeristy of Auckland and Hematologist, training in New Zealand and The Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. He was PI of a transplant immunology laboratory in Brisbane, Australia between 2001 and 2018 which focused on the interactions between cytokines, antigen precenting cells and T cell differentiation during stem cell transplantation.

His laboratory developed a number of paradigms in the field that have instructed clinical practice over this period.

Prof. Hill moved to The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, USA in 2018 to take up the Jose Carreras/E. Donnall Thomas Endowed Chair for Cancer Research and Director roles for Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation and the Immunotherapy Integrated Research Center.

He is also a Senior Vice President and the Head of the Translational Science and Therapeutics Division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. Over the last 4 years his laboratory has developed new multiome and imaging approaches to study aberrant and tumor-specific immune responses in tissue that have led to a number of new NIH R01, U01 and P01 funded preclinical and translational clinical studies.

Professor Roslyn Kemp

Professor Roslyn Kemp is an immunologist at the University of Otago, New Zealand. Her research focusses on immune responses in people with colorectal cancer or Inflammatory Bowel Diseases. She specialises in T cells and how these cells can be modified to improve immune responses.

She has expertise in high dimensional data analyses and uses in vivo models and clinical samples and has published in high impact journals. Her research goals are to use immune response in patients to improve diagnoses and improve response to therapies by better targeting treatments to individual patients. She is Associate Dean, Research, for the Division of Health Sciences, University of Otago.

Professor P. Joy Ho

Professor P. Joy Ho AM MBBS (Syd) DPhil (Oxon) FRACP FRCPA FFSc(RCPA) is a Professor, Alan Ng Chair in Haematology, University of Sydney, and Head of Department & Director of Research at the Institute of Haematology, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (RPAH), Sydney. She is Clinical Lead, Haematology CAR-T Program and Head of the Myeloma Unit in RPAH. She is the Founding Director of Sydney Blood Cancer Research Institute. Her research achievements include stewardship of national clinical trials, and has brought multiple clinical trials on novel CAR-T, myeloma and lymphoma therapies to RPAH and Australia.

She is also head of the RPA Thalassemia Unit which performed the first gene therapy trial in Australia. She was President of the Haematology Society of Australia and New Zealand (HSANZ) in 2013-15. She is Foundation Member and was Deputy Chair of the Medical and Scientific Advisory group of Myeloma Australia, and member of the International Myeloma Working Group. She was elected to the Board of the International Myeloma Society in 2019, and has served on the Education Committee since 2016. She served on the Australasian Leukemia & Lymphoma Group Scientific and Executive Committees, and chaired the Laboratory Science Committee in 2005-11. In 2017-2021, she was appointed to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee by the Australian Government. For the American Society of Hematology (ASH), she is invited member of the International Members’ Committee since 2016 Vice Chair since 2021 and appointed Chair for 2024-6, and Chair of Metrics since 2018. Awards received include the Carl de Gruchy Oratorship of the HSANZ in 2022, Inaugural HSANZ Leadership Award in 2023, Albert Baikie Memorial Medal, Kanematsu Memorial Award, Arnott Fellowship in Cancer Research, New York Academy of Sciences Fellowship and Oxford Nuffield Medical Fellowship. She is author of multiple publications on myeloma, lymphoma, cellular immunotherapy and haemoglobinopathies.

Doctor Kate Vandyke

Dr Kate Vandyke (The University of Adelaide and South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute [SAHMRI]) is co-lead of the Myeloma Research Laboratory, the University of Adelaide, based at the SAHMRI. Dr Vandyke's research focusses on identifying novel biomarkers that predict risk of disease progression in MGUS, smouldering myeloma and multiple myeloma patients, and on elucidating the role of the bone marrow microenvironment in multiple myeloma disease progression.

Professor Roger Reddel

Roger Reddel, AO BSc (Med) MBBS PhD FRACP FAHMS FAA, is the Director of Children's Medical Research Institute (CMRI) and the Lorimer Dods Professor, University of Sydney. He trained as a medical oncologist in Australia and in molecular cancer research. His research has mostly focused on cancer cell immortalization, including the role of telomerase and the Alternative Lengthening of Telomeres mechanism. He is also a co-founder of ProCan®, an internaltionally collaborative program that is developing proteomic techniques and a knowledge base to enable the routine use of proteomic data in adult and pediatric clinical oncology

Professor Wendy Erber

A medical graduate from the University of Sydney, Wendy specialised in haematology with a major focus on diagnostic haematology and translational research. She completed her DPhil in Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship and subsequently trained in haematology leading to FRCPA. She has held Consultant Haemagologist posts at Royal Perth Hospital, PathWest and Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge (where she established and led the East of England Haemato-Oncology Diagnostic Service).

In 2011 she was recruited to the University of WA and PathWest as a Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. Her research has spanned immunocytochemistry, genomics of haematological disease and invention of imaging flow cytometry that incorporates FISH. This world-fist revolutionary technique automates chromosome testing of blood cancer cells and dramatically improves test accuracy (at least 4-orders of magnitude) over current tests. For this work, Wendy and her team won the 2018 Eureka prize for tecnological innovations. A major focus of this development has been in the assessment of chromosomal defects in plasma cells in both the marrow and blood of patients with myeloma. She practices diagnostic haematology, teaches at UWA, supervises and mentors research students, and undertakes research.

Doctor Sridurga Mithraprabhu

Dr Mithraprabhu is a Senior Research Fellow in the Myeloma Research Group (MRG) at the Australian Centre for Blood Diseases (ACBD). She has worked in multiple myeloma (MM) research for 10+ years and has extensively investigated histone deacetylase inhibitor, panobinostat, that provided the insight for initiation of a clinical trial for MM maintenance therapy at the Alfred Hospital.

From 2014, she has developed and led the liquid biopsy research program for multiple myeloma that focuses on the detection and analysis of biomarkers in the blood stream of MM patients. This work provided the framework for the establishment of a national biobank, the M1000, and she is the Principal Scientist on the M1000 biobanking committee. She is also a co-investigator on MM clinical trials at the Alfred Hospital. Her liquid biopsy program has resulted in several peer-reviewed publications, attracted significant research funding and industry collaboration. Her current focus is to develop a screening blood test as an alternative methodology to bone marrow biopsy that can potentially transform MM clinical management.

Professor Simon Harrison

Prof. Simon Harrison is the Director, Centre of Excellence for Cellular Immunotherpy at VCCC and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Director of Clinical Spheresis, and a clinician scientist in the Sir Peter MacCallum Department of Oncology in Melbourne University. He is a leading Australia Myeloma clinician and chair of the Myeloma Scientific Advisory Group at Myeloma Australia.

Clinical Research: Prof Harrison's clinical research is focused in the field of multiple myeloma examining novel therapies including novel drug combinations, early phase clinical trial design, the incorporation of novel biomarkers into clinical protocols and cellular immunotherapy therapy.

Laboratory research: Prof Harrison's work focuses on the immunopathology of multiple myeloma, the impact of novel drug combinations in cellular immune therapies and in vivo cell tracking. He is also a lead in the development of POL1 inhibitors in combination with other novel drugs to target ribosome biogenesis.