About SAIGENCI
Advancing cancer research, transforming cancer care.
The South Australian immunoGENomics Cancer Institute (SAiGENCI) is a dedicated independent biomedical research institute that is embedded in the University of ÐÂÀ˲ÊƱ and allied with the Central ÐÂÀ˲ÊƱ Local Health Network (CALHN).Ìý This structure, under the inaugural directorship of a clinician-scientist, is enabling transformative cancer discovery research to be efficiently translated into strategies to make clinically meaningful improvements in clinical care that will prevent cancer development and improve the lives of patients with cancer.Ìý SAiGENCI has been established with four foundational programs which form its strategic pillars and capitalise on our unique scientific, technical and intellectual leadership to enable the study of both biological function in normal cells as well as interrogate the inherent dysfunction that leads to cancer development and cancer cell therapy resistance.Ìý SAiGENCI is also resourced to exploit the biomedical and technological advances that are essential to abrogate the cellular dysfunction which underpins the development of cancer and its resistance to therapy.Ìý SAiGENCI is addressing this problem with a team-science and multidisciplinary approach enabled by the University of ÐÂÀ˲ÊƱ and CALHN alliance with the research spanning from the laboratory to the clinic and back again and in so doing creating a virtuous cycle of informative and impactful patient-centric research.
SAiGENCI is founded by a team-science strategy to co-ordinate the diverse expertise required to both prevent cancer and increase the efficacy and decrease of the burden of cancer care.Ìý The SAiGENCI team is comprised of internationally recognised laboratory clinical researchers.Ìý The Institute is also collaborating with likeminded centres of excellence across the globe and are part of the global effort to deliver world-class and life-changing treatments and outcomes for cancer patients.
SAiGENCI’s objectives include:
- Forging strong research collaborations.
- Developing and testing new technologies and discoveries.
- Improving treatment and care options for people living with cancer.
- Training South Australian clinicians.
- Commercialising new discoveries.
SAiGENCI’s goals
The goals for the South Australian immunoGENomics Cancer Institute are ambitious.Ìý SAiGENCI is a focal point for cancer research in the South Australian Biomedical Precinct and through this is enabling South Australian participation in the growing Australian network of cancer institutes, and national and international cancer research partnerships – spanning the laboratory to the clinic in a virtuous cycle.
SAiGENCI has created an environment that has attracted new talent from across the globe to South Australia, and has added to the existing strengths in South Australian to be a critical node in the national cancer research effort.
Successful collaboration and institutional partnership have proven to be fundamental to our success and are underpinning the impact we are having on the generation and dissemination of new knowledge, and its application to the benefit of patients.
Specifically, this involves:
- Fostering an intellectual environment in SAiGENCI that is a magnet for the attraction and retention of clinical academic and cancer research talent, establishing an aggressive national and international recruitment program that builds research, translation and clinical capability in cutting-edge cancer research including immune and genetic based-research in South Australia.
- Transformative research platforms and technologies to expand genomic and related (e.g. epigenomic, transcriptomic, metabolomic) profiling of tumours which are facilitating research, clinical trials, and ultimately, enable precision oncology.
- Integrating South Australian cancer research, clinical trials, care and education with national networks and programs.
- Contributing to the development of contemporary and cutting-edge training programs for clinician scientists, research scientists and the health and medical research workforce.
- Collaborating with partners in the ÐÂÀ˲ÊƱ Biomedical Precinct for transtion of SAiGENCI discoveries to the clinic and bolster national and international industry-sponsored and investigator-led clinical trials.
- Working with the wider University and Central ÐÂÀ˲ÊƱ Local Health Network to build relationships within the philanthropic sector that will help to diversify and strengthen the Institute’s revenues into the long-term future.
- Clear communication with the community to ensure SAIGENCI’s efforts are both understood and aligned with the needs of society.
- Endorsement and alignment with national and international best-practices for the conduct of ethical research performed with the utmost of integrity.
Vision
Conduct transformative cancer research to decrease the incidence of cancer and improve the outcomes of patients with cancer.
Mission
Culture
Our team
Professor Christopher Sweeney has been appointed as SAiGENCI's inaugural Director.
Professor Sweeney is a Medical Oncologist, formerly with the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.ÌýProfessor Sweeney received his medical degree from the University of ÐÂÀ˲ÊƱ in 1992 and completed an internship at the Royal ÐÂÀ˲ÊƱ Hospital. He did his residency in internal medicine at Gundersen Lutheran Medical Center, La Crosse, Wisconsin and a fellowship in Hematology/Oncology at Indiana University Medical Center, where he was later appointed Associate Director for Clinical Research for the Simon Cancer Center. He joined the Lank Center for Genitourinary Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School in 2009.
His primary research interest is drug discovery and development. His academic focus is the management of genitourinary malignancies, with a focus on prostate and testicular cancer.
SAiGENCI's Program Lead, Resistance Prevention is Professor Lisa Butler.Ìý
Professor Lisa Butler is a Cancer Council SA Beat Cancer Principal Cancer Research Fellow in the Freemasons Centre for Male Health and Wellbeing (FCMHW) at the University of ÐÂÀ˲ÊƱ.Ìý She is also Director of the Solid Tumour Program and heads the Prostate Cancer Research Group at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI).Ìý She holds key executive positions in the FCMHW, the Australian Prostate Cancer BioResource, the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia and the Australian and New Zealand Urogenital and Prostate Cancer Trials Group.
Professor Butler has established an internationally-recognised research program focused on prostate cancer, the most common male cancer; in which she is discovering new therapeutic targets alongside innovative, non-invasive biomarkers to monitor them.
Professor Butler undertook postdoctoral studies at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York from 1998-2001.Ìý Her work there directly contributed to the clinical development of histone deacetylase inhibitors as anticancer agents and sparked her interests in translational cancer research.Ìý Since returning to Australia, a major focus of her research program has been the development of preclinical models involving primary clinical samples, which more closely represent the individual drug responses in men with prostate cancer.Ìý She has established productive translational research programs that leverage these unique preclinical models, prostate biobanking, proof-of-concept clinical trials, clinical biomarker development and international collaborations.Ìý From 2015, she has led a Movember Revolutionary Team to investigate the role of lipids in prostate cancer and their potential as new biomarkers of disease aggressiveness, and in 2019 she and her collaborators were awarded funding from the US Department of Defense to further study and therapeutically target lipid metabolising enzymes in prostate cancer. ÌýHer other major research interests include development of novel combinatorial strategies to target the androgen receptor and lipid metabolism pathways in prostate cancer.
Professor Butler also leads SAiGENCI’s Graduate Program for HDR and Honours students.
Professor Brendan Jenkins leads SAiGENCI's Tumour Inflammation and Immunotherapy program, which aims to identify ways to make tumours more visible to the body's immune system and improve immune therapies.
Professor Jenkins specialises in the role of innate immunity in precancerous chronic inflammatory conditions such as gastritis and pancreatitis, and inflammation-associated cancers, in particular gastric (stomach), pancreatic and lung cancers.
As part of his role, Professor Jenkins will help build immunology expertise at the University of ÐÂÀ˲ÊƱ.
Professor Jenkins joins SAiGENCI from the Hudson Institute of Medical Research, where he was Centre Head for the Centre for Innate Immunity and Infectious Diseases.
The knowledge gained by his research has already had a significant impact on biomarker and drug development and in multiple scientific and medical fields, including cancer biology, oncology, immunology, gastroenterology and respiratory medicine.
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Professor Lan Nguyen was appointed in 2025 to lead SAiGENCI's Computational Systems Oncology program, bringing extensive expertise in integrating advanced computational modelling with cutting-edge biological techniques to understand and combat cancer.
Professor Nguyen completed his PhD in Computational Systems Biology before joining Systems Biology Ireland, where he trained under international leaders in systems biology.Ìý After advancing to junior group leader there, he was recruited to Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute in 2015, where he established one of the few research labs worldwide combining both computational modelling and experimental capabilities under one roof.
Professor Nguyen is internationally recognised for developing sophisticated, experimentally-validated computational models of important biological systems.Ìý Through exploiting systems-based approaches that synergise advanced techniques from computational and experimental sciences, his studies have established new systems-level insights into cell signalling and cell-fate determination.Ìý His interdisciplinary research has shed new light on mechanisms of anti-cancer drug resistance and identified novel therapeutic strategies.Ìý His work has appeared in high-impact journals including Nature Cell Biology, Cell Systems, eLife, Nature Communications, and Cancer Research.Ìý He has secured more than $5.5 million in competitive CIA funding and serves as a Chief Investigator of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Mathematical Modelling of Cellular Systems (MACSYS).
His innovative approaches have earned multiple honours, including a Victorian Cancer Agency Mid-Career Fellowship, CIA of a prestigious Cancer Council Victoria Venture Grant, and editorship of an authoritative book on computational modelli