The Australian Skin and Skin Cancer Research Centre was proud to welcome Professor Nicholas Hayward into the ASSC Executive team.
Professor Hayward is currently Head of the Oncogenomics Laboratory and Deputy Coordinator of the Cancer Program at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute. He brings over 30 years of experience in studying molecular genetics of Melanoma, and is a foundation member of the International Melanoma Genetics Consortium (GenoMEL) and the Society for Melanoma Research.
His great experience adds to the existing ASSC Executive of Professor H. Peter Soyer (The University of Queensland), Professor David Whiteman (QIMR Berghofer) and Associate Professor Kiarash Khosrotehrani (The University of Queensland), furthering the collaborative potential within the skin and skin cancer field.
His work spans molecular epidemiology, genetics, genomics, cell biology and mouse models of melanoma.
He played key roles in the identification of CDK4, MITF, POT1, ACD and TERF2IP as familial melanoma susceptibility genes and has contributed significantly to several genome-wide association studies for melanoma and the associated phenotypic traits of pigmentation and naevi. Through his extensive research collaborations he has contributed to the understanding of key somatic mutations that drive melanocyte neoplasia, including the seminal findings of BRAF mutations in naevi, and MAP3K5, MAP3K9, RASA2 and RAC1 mutations in melanoma.
He is currently a principal investigator of the Australian Melanoma Genome Project – an endeavour that aims to characterize the genomic landscape of somatic mutations and chromosomal aberrations in >500 melanomas.