ASTRA 2025

Ankur Sharma

Invited Speaker, Garvan Institute

Dr. Ankur Sharma is a laboratory head and CSL Centenary Fellow at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in the Translational Genomics Program. He is known for the discovery of foetal-like cells in the tumour microenvironment, a phenomenon he termed 'Oncofetal ecosystem' (Cell 2020). Recently, he has shown the implication of these cells in predicting outcomes after immunotherapy (Nature Cancer 2024).

This work has now led to an investigator-initiated clinical trial with the support of NHMRC and Roche. Ankur is a renowned expert in single-cell genomics and spatial transcriptomics. He received his PhD from the IISc in 2014, where he was awarded the best PhD thesis award. After a brief post-doctoral stint at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, he was recruited to the Genome Institute of Singapore to establish singlecell genomics in cancer research. His work in this field was well recognised, and he
was awarded several accolades, such as the GIS Outstanding Clinical Partnership Award, Conquer Cancer, the ASCO Foundation Merit Award, the University of British Columbia co-op Supervisor Recognition Award, and the 10x Genomics Clinical Translation Research Network. In 2021, Dr. Sharma established his laboratory at the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research in Perth. In 2024, he was recruited to the Garvan Institute of Medical Research for Translational Genomics Research, where he
collaborates extensively with liver cancer clinicians across Australia and the APAC.

He has received funding from NHMRC Ideas, NHMRC Clinical trial and cohort, NHMRCAMED,
MRFF (EMCR), CSL Centenary fellowship, Roche etc (>25M AUD). He has published research in Cell (2x), Science (2x), Immunity (2x), Cancer Cell, Nature Cancer, Sci Immunology, Nat Rev Cancer, Nature Comms, etc.