Hamish Scott

Professor Hamish Scott - TITLEHOLDER.
Professor Scott completed his PhD in1992. His first post-doc position was at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital and the University of Adelaide. During these 7 years he led the discovery of genes for 3 rare human diseases. After 11 more years this resulted in either FDA approved therapy (2003) or clinical trials of novel therapies for these diseases.
In 1995, Hamish moved to the University of Geneva Medical School in Switzerland. His focus was, and remains, the application of genetic and genomic technologies to understand diseases processes to improve diagnoses and treatment. He led international collaborations in identification of human genes causing Down syndrome and rare forms of genetic deafness and autoimmunity (e.g. arthritis and multiple sclerosis). This continues to have profound effects on our understanding of basic biology of Down syndrome, hearing and the immune system and lead to new therapeutic strategies in these and related diseases. This was also the start of his interest in cancer and leukemia as children with Down syndrome have a low incidence of solid tumours and a high incidence of leukemia. This is also when he started to work on familial predisposition to leukemia.

Hamish relocated to the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI) in Melbourne in 2000 as the Inaugural Nossal Leadership Fellow. He was appointed as a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) senior research fellow in 2001. His laboratory identified 2 additional deafness genes and described the role of a gene in reprogramming the DNA of an “adult” cell from “normal” to become a gamete (sperm or oocyte). He also described a cause of familial predisposition to leukemia.

Since returning to Adelaide in January 2008 he has been Deputy and then Head of the Department of Molecular Pathology at SA Pathology, He is an inaugural member of the Centre for Cancer Biology an Affiliate Professor in both the Schools of Medicine and Molecular and Biomedical Science at the University of Adelaide and an Adjunct Professor in the School of Pharmacy and Medical Sciences in the Division of Health Sciences of the University of South Australia. He is an NHMRC principal research fellow, a Founding Fellow of the Faculty of Science (FFSc) of the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia (RCPA) and was recently (2015) elected as a Fellow to the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences (FAHMS).

He has led recent international collaborations published in Nat Genet and Blood (x2) on identification of germline mutations in rare families and patients that predispose them to acute myeloid leukemia (AML), infectious diseases, lymphoedema (in GATA2 Embergers syndrome and familial MDS/AML) and diverse hematologic malignancies (in DDX41). This has lead international recognition of the fact that there can be a substantive, sometimes monogenic, predisoposition to haematological malignancies and response to treatments.

He is a Joint Director of the CCB ACRF Cancer Genome Facility established at SA Pathology, the Facilitator of the Genomics, Genetics and Drugable Targets pillar, of the South Australian Comprehensive Cancer Consortium, on the Executive Committee of the South Australian Cancer Research Biobank and the National Steering Committee of the newly NHMRC funded Australian Genomics Health Alliance. In these roles he has been central to introducing introduce new technologies for both somatic and germline genotyping (e.g. using next generation sequencing to SA Pathology at a panel, exome and whole genome level) for improved diagnoses and treatment (personalized medicine) for which his team won an SA Health Award for Excellence.