A/Prof. Susan L. Woods.Bowel and stomach cancers have high mortality rates when not diagnosed early, resulting in more than 6,000 deaths in Australia each year. That is way too many. The 5-year survival for advanced disease is 12% for bowel cancer and 5% for stomach cancer. This highlights the need for improvements to our screening approaches to identify early disease and new options for treatment of advanced disease. In addition to increased rates of bowel cancer in younger adults (<50 years of age), the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in later diagnosis, making finding more effective screening and treatment approaches more critical now than ever.Susan is a biomedical scientist with three first author Nature publications to her credit. She trained with Nobel Laureate J. Michael Bishop (UCSF), Prof Nick Hayward (QIMR-B) and A/Prof Daniel Worthley (SAHMRI). Her research integrates state-of-the-art approaches using both patient samples and sophisticated preclinical models, to address clinical needs for gut cancer patients.Projects in the lab focus on reducing the incidence of gut cancers - through better detection and prevention. We are developing new, gut lumen screening tests to detect and respond to early disease before cancer cells have escaped into the blood. My team is testing genetically engineered strains of probiotic bacteria that naturally home to neoplasia, to release detection and chemo-prevention payloads. Together with our Australian research partners, we also assess personalised treatment regimes for advanced disease using patient samples grown in a dish. If this works, it will guide therapy choice for patients, reducing unwarranted side-effects and picking the treatment that will work most effectively for each patient. Projects in the lab also investigate how the bacterial community in our gut is changed in cancer, and the role this plays in promoting this disease. This may lead to a probiotic supplement for high risk people to assist with bowel cancer detection or prevention in the future.