Professor Hui Gan is a clinician scientist who specialises in the treatment of patients with primary brain tumours. He is the Brain Tumour Stream Lead at Austin Health and has led over 70 industry trials in brain and other cancers in 2010. Since 2019, he has been one of the Directors of the Olivia Newton John Cancer Research Institute’s Centre for Research Excellence (ONJCRI CRE) in Brain Cancer. In his own role as a clinician scientist, he has a proven track record in the development of novel drugs and in leading novel investigator-initiated trials in brain cancer.
This includes the preclinical development of a novel class of tumour specific EGFR antibodies followed by leadership roles with AbbVie in the development of derivative drugs including depatuxizumab mafadotin, losatuxizumab vedotin, serclutamab talirine and ABBV-637. Similarly, he led the development of the EphA3 targeting drug ifabotuzumab, which also originated within the ONJCRI CRE, into a Phase 1 trial in glioblastoma patients and confirmed it as a novel tumour microenvironment targeting drug.
His lab continues to be focused on characterising drugs for translation into the clinic. The most advanced are three novel antibodies in the ErbB family, which have resulted in one patent and the creation of the medical start-up company Certis. He created, funded and chairs the on-going LUMOS-2 study, a precision oncology umbrella study that provides multiple novel drugs for patients with recurrent IDH-mutated gliomas. The study has since expanded to Canada and continues to expand it as one of the few trials for these patients globally. His current publication count is over 150 including in Nature, Cell, Journal of Clinical Oncology and Neuro-Oncology.
