INSPIRATIONAL AUSTRALIAN WOMEN
Dr Samantha Oakes brings 20 years’ experience of breast cancer research to the role of Director, Research Investment at the National Breast Cancer Foundation. After beginning her scientific career in 2001 at the Garvan Institute, Sydney, she was awarded her PhD in 2007, funded by NHMRC and NBCF fellowships and received the ‘Garvan Institute Best Thesis Prize’ for her work understanding the role of the pituitary hormone prolactin in basal breast cancer. In 2008, Samantha was awarded an NBCF Early Career Fellowship to further her studies at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute. Her work focussed on understanding how specialised signals in breast cancer cells prevent them from dying. She later showed that by turning these signals off, triple negative breast cancers could be sensitised to routine chemotherapy. In 2012, Samantha returned to the Garvan Institute to establish her own laboratory and together with her team, discovered a new dual therapeutic and antimetastatic strategy for triple negative breast cancer. In 2019/2020, Samantha established and led the Long Term Follow Up Unit of the Molecular Screening and Therapeutics Program based at the Garvan Institute, an essential part of Australia’s largest Genomic Cancer Medicine Trial. Samantha has contributed to peer review for the NHMRC, NBCF, CINSW and is a peer review committee chair within the New Zealand Health Research Council project grant system. In addition to her science, Samantha is a passionate advocate of breast cancer research in the community and a mentor to scientific and non-scientific staff. Samantha is now Director, Research Investment, National Breast Cancer Foundation, a position which enables her to facilitate, promote and support the very best research in Australia. After dedicating her entire career to breast cancer research, Samantha is committed to helping National Breast Cancer Foundation reach their mission of zero deaths from Breast Cancer.
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