Mark Shackleton

Professor Shackleton returned to Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre from the University of Michigan in a town called Ann Arbor, USA, where he was developing expertise in melanoma cell biology.

He was a member of the veski board of directors from 2014 to 2016 as a representative of the veski alumni.

In July 2017, he was made Director of Oncology at Alfred Health and Professor of Oncology at Alfred Clinical School, Monash University.

Research project: Modelling human melanoma progression

Victoria and Australia have among the highest rates of melanoma in the world, and yet melanoma remains one of the greatest challenges to manage for all but the smallest of tumours.

During Mark’s studies in the USA, he developed a highly efficient method of growing human melanoma tumours in mice in a way that may be similar to progression of this disease in humans.

Mark and colleagues in the US discovered that a very high proportion of melanoma cells has the potential to spread disease within patients.

Mark plans to establish his cutting edge technology in the Victorian cancer research community by founding the Melanoma Research Laboratory at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, in Melbourne.

Through this, his research program will identify fundamental mechanisms that cause melanomas to progress in patients, including key aspects of melanoma cell behaviour as well the genes that drive them.

In association with the Melbourne Melanoma Project and his related role in caring for melanoma patients at Peter Mac as a medical oncologist, Mark will also be ideally placed to translate discoveries made about human melanoma cell growth to the care of patients.

One hope for Mark’s work is to improve, through the use of models, the ability to predict melanoma behaviour in individual patients, and thereby optimise the selection of patients for promising new treatments.