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Science and Ethics Committee

The Science and Ethics Committee is a group of leading Australian stem cell scientists who provide advice to the NSCFA on scientific and ethical issues relating to stem cell research, the needs of researchers in Australia, public education and awareness, and importantly on government and regulatory developments.

Professor Geoff Lindeman, BSc(Med) MB BS(Hons) PhD FRACP FAHMS FAA

Geoff Lindeman, a clinician-scientist, is Joint Head of the Cancer Biology and Stem Cells Division at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (NHMRC Leadership Fellow) and a medical oncologist (breast cancer) at the Peter Ma­­cCallum Cancer Centre and Royal Melbourne Hospital. He holds an honorary appointment as Professorial Fellow in the Department of Medicine, Royal Melbourne Hospital, University of Melbourne. He leads the Centre for Translational Breast Cancer Research (TransBCR), enabled by a NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence grant. His laboratory is studying molecular and cellular regulators of normal mammary gland development and events that go awry that lead to breast cancer. His team identified breast stem cells and has contributed influential discoveries into how stem cells and their descendants are regulated by female hormones and ‘master regulators’ of cell fate. The discovery of the culprit cell that gives rise to breast cancer in women with a faulty BRCA1 gene has led to an international breast cancer prevention study, BRCA-P, currently underway. His group has also generated patient derived xenograft (PDX) models that are being used in ‘proof-of-principle’ pre-clinical studies, to study promising drugs. Several of these have been further investigated in early phase clinical trials for patients with relapsed breast cancer.  He has been elected as Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences.

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Professor Alice Pébay, BSc (Psych) PhD

Professor Alice Pébay is a NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellow at The University of Melbourne and Royal Melbourne Hospital. She is also a Member of the ARC College of Experts, a Director of Genetic Cures Australia, Adjunct Associate Professor of the University of Western Australia’s Centre for Ophthalmology and Visual Science, a Member of the Australasian Friedreich Ataxia Gene Therapy Clinical Trials Committee, an Affiliate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and a Scientific Advisory Board Member of the ASX listed company PYC Therapeutics. She has also worked as the Head of the Neuroregeneration Research Unit at the Centre for Eye Research Australia. Alice’s research aims to use patient specific pluripotent stem cells to model neurodegenerative diseases of the eye and brain. She has a proven track record in generating iPSCs and differentiating them into various cell types for disease modelling including those affecting the central nervous system and the eye. Alice and her collaborators have pioneered the use of automation for human pluripotent stem cell research in Australia, enabling the streamlining generation and maintenance of iPSC-derived cells from hundreds of patients. Alice was awarded a National Health & Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Career development Fellowship in 2012, subsequently an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship in 2014 and is now a NHMRC Senior Research Fellow. Alice is the primary inventor of three granted international patents related to stem cell technology.

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