Associate Professor Caroline Baker FRACS
Clinical Program Director, Surgical Services
Director of Breast Surgery St Vincent’s Hospital
Designated Surgeon St Vincent’s BreastScreen
President, BreastSurgANZ
Associate Professor Caroline Baker obtained her MBBS from Melbourne University in 1985 and her FRACS in 1994. She then spent 5 years in The UK where she was one of the early advocates of sentinel node biopsy, learnt the art of multidisciplinary care and the value of the breast care nurse. Following 18 years as member then Director of Breast Services at Austin Health, Caroline is now Head of Breast Surgery at St Vincent’s Public Hospital and Chief Surgeon to St Vincent’s Breast Screen. She is also a director of Victorian Breast and Oncology Care, a foundation member of BreastSurgANZ and an active member of the Australasian Society of Breast Diseases and Breast Cancer Trials. Caroline teaches medical students, junior doctors, lymphoedema practitioners, BCNA nurses and volunteers. She brings experience, maturity and passion to the delivery of breast cancer care to ensure that the standards within our subspecialist field are of the highest quality, consistency and validity.

 

Prof. Bruce Mann is Professor of Surgery at the University of Melbourne and Director of The Breast Service at the Royal Melbourne and Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne. He is on the council of Breast SurgANZ, the Scientific Advisory Committee of the ANZ Breast Cancer Trials Group and is past president of the Clinical Oncology Society of Australia. He has been involved in many clinical trials and much clinical and translational research regarding breast cancer, with his main research interest being tailoring treatment to the disease and the patient.

 

Prof. Alastair Thompson graduated from the University of Edinburgh, UK with Distinction in Surgery and subsequently trained as a Clinician Scientist and Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. In 2014 he moved from the position of Professor of Surgical Oncology, Clinical Lead for the Dundee Cancer Centre/Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre and Foundation Director of the Clinical Research Centre, Dundee, UK to the Department of Surgical Oncology, The University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, specializing in breast cancer. Achievements to date include setting up and chairing the Breast Cancer Campaign Breast Tissue Bank Board for the UK and Eire, leading the 12,000 patient UK National Audit of Screen Detected DCIS and, for 5 years to 2014, chairing the UK National Cancer Research Institute, Breast Clinical Studies Group (with oversight of 120 academic and commercial clinical studies in breast cancer). He actively contributes to a range of clinical trials in the prevention, early detection and therapy of breast cancer. He remains as UK Chief Investigator for a number of key trials including MINDACT, MA32 and SOLE and continues to chair the data monitoring committees and trials steering groups for several phase II drug trials and phase III surgical trials respectively in the UK. Active in translational laboratory research, he built a breast cancer research program over 15 years in Dundee, including a xenograft program and tissue banking facility with a focus on the p53 network and drug development. He has successfully supervised 20 PhD or research MD students and currently has 4 students completing PhDs. The impact of over 200 peer reviewed research papers has included global firsts demonstrating the effect of drugs in vivo in animal models and in human cancers. He continues to provide leadership in trials and clinical translational research with colleagues in Europe and Australasia while establishing clinical trials and laboratory collaborations in the US, through membership of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, American Association of Cancer Research, South West Oncology Group and Translational Breast Cancer Research Consortium.

Dr. Javier Cortes received a degree in Medicine and Surgery from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in 1996. He continued his studies at the University of Navarra, specialising in Medical Oncology at the Clínica Universitaria de Navarra, where he continued as Assistant in the Department of Oncology from 2002. He was Associated Professor of Oncology in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Navarra during that period. Dr. Cortés was awarded the title of Doctor in Medical Oncology from the University of Navarra in 2002. Since 2003, he has worked in the Department of Medical Oncology at the Hospital Vall d’ Hebron, Barcelona, where he is Coordinator of the Teaching and Training Programme for Residents in Oncology and Senior Specialist in the Area of Breast Cancer with a special interest in New Drugs Development. Dr. Cortés is Head of the Breast Cancer Unit and the Melanoma Unit.
In addition, he has two masters’ degree: “Medical Direction and Clinical Management” by the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) and “Research methodology in Health Sciences” by the Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona and a degree in “Statistics in Health Sciences” by the Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona.
Dr. Cortes is the author of more than 100 publications, especially about breast tumours and new drugs and more than 250 communications at different conferences. He actively participates in the development of numerous national and international clinical investigations, especially in relation to drugs directed against molecular targets and new chemotherapy agents, and he is an ad hoc reviewer of various oncology journals.
Dr Cortés is an active member of the Spanish, European, and American Societies of Medical Oncology (SEOM, ESMO, ASCO), a member of the Scientific Committee of the European Society of Medical Oncology and the Scientific Committee of SOLTI group.

Dr. Richard De Boer completed his basic medical and oncology training at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and then in 1997 undertook a 3-year breast and lung cancer clinical research fellowship at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, working with Professor Ian Smith.
He returned to Melbourne in 2000 and since then has been a consultant medical oncologist working in both public and private practice. His primary areas of clinical interest are in breast and lung cancer, with breast cancer interests focusing on endocrine therapy and mechanisms of resistance, treatment-induced bone loss and bone metastases, and biological predictors of response/survival. He is actively involved in clinical research, and is a member of the Australian New Zealand Breast Cancer Trials Group, and head of the Breast Trials group of Cancer Trials Australia. He has authored or co-authored articles appearing in journals such as the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Annals of Oncology, The Breast and British Journal of Cancer.

 

Dr. Peter Chin is a breast surgeon with a special interest in Oncoplastic breast surgery, working at Tauranga Hospital and Grace Private Hospital in Tauranga, New Zealand since 2006. He is the lead surgeon for the Tauranga Hospital Breast Service. He graduated from the University of Melbourne and completed his surgical training in New Zealand before undertaking his subspecialty training at the world-renowned Edinburgh Breast Unit. Peter has been an Executive Director of the Australasian Society for Breast Disease since 2018 and is on the Oncoplastic subcommittee of Breast Surgeons in Australia and New Zealand (BreastSurgANZ). He is a passionate teacher in Oncoplastic surgery and has taught widely. He has been actively involved in the teaching faculty for the BreastSurgANZ Oncoplastic breast workshops since 2015 and had contributed to the University of Sydney’s Postgraduate/Masters Breast course. He is also on the medical advisory committee of the NZ Breast Cancer Foundation.