Professor Nico van Zandwijk is the inaugural Director of the Asbestos Diseases Research Institute located in the Bernie Banton Centre, Concord Hospital, Sydney, Australia. He earned his medical degree at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in 1973 and wrote his thesis on “Pulmonary injury elicited by blood” in 1976. He was editor of the hematology section of Excerpta Medica until 1980, and received licences in internal medicine and pulmonary medicine in 1979 and 1981, respectively. In the same year he was appointed Assistant Professor of the Academic Medical Centre, Amsterdam and became Consultant Physician at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam. From 1985 to 2008 he was Head of the Department of Thoracic Oncology at that Institute.

Professor van Zandwijk has served as Secretary (1982–1988) and Chair (1988–1994) of the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) Lung Cancer Group.
He has chaired a number of boards and committees including: the Scientific Board of the clinical section of the Netherlands Cancer Institute; a National Advisory Board for new lung cancer medications, and a state Council on asbestos and lung cancer. He has also been a member of the Advisory Board of the Thoracic Section of the French National Cancer Institute. He is currently a member of the National Lung Cancer Advisory Group, Cancer Australia, and the National Asbestos Management Review Panel (Australian Government) (2009-) and Advisor to ADFA (Asbestos Diseases Foundation of Australia). 

Professor van Zandwijk is currently a Board Director of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer. In 2011 he co-chaired the 14th World Conference on Lung Cancer. He is a Study Coordinator in several international studies, and has authored or co-authored more than 200 peer-reviewed international papers and chapters.

Dr Christopher Clarke commenced practice as a Consultant Thoracic Physician in 1976. His special interest has been occupational lung disease. He has held appointments at a number of public hospitals in Sydney including Visiting Medical Officer in the Department of Thoracic Medicine at Concord Hospital until December 2008. Dr Clarke now works as a thoracic physician in a number of country centres including Walgett, Kempsey and Port Macquarie. He was nominated by workers as a member of the Medical Board Authority of the Workers Compensation (Dust Diseases) Board of NSW.

Dr Glen Reid was appointed Senior Research Scientist in April 2009. He has been the Principal Investigator, Head of RNAi Product Development for Genesis Research & Development Corporation in New Zealand. In 2004 Glen was originally employed by Genesis as a Staff Scientist in molecular biology and in 2006 he became Senior Staff Scientist and led a cancer RNAi discovery program. During this time he collaborated with the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Auckland and was an Honorary Senior Lecturer. As a Research Fellow (2003-04) he helped set up the newly formed Children’s Cancer Research Group laboratories in Christchurch, New Zealand having completed his Postdoctoral with Professor Piet Borst at The Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam. His main focus was on the characterization of multidrug resistance proteins.

Dr Lyn Schedlich joined ADRI as a Research Fellow in September 2009. Her previous appointment was as Head of the Gene Regulation Laboratory in the Hormones and Cancer Group at the Kolling Institute of Medical Research. During that time her research focused on understanding how members of the insulin-like growth factor family of proteins modulated nuclear hormone and TGF-b1 signalling pathways in experimental models of breast and bone cancer. She established collaborative studies with a number of organizations including John Curtin School of Medical Research, CSIRO Molecular Science and The Garvan Institute of Medical Research. Lyn has many years of experience as a cancer cell biologist with a particular interest in cell imaging and flow cytometry.

Dr Michaela Kirschner commenced as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Asbestos Diseases Research Institute in September 2009. Having completed her teaching degree studies in biology and chemistry, Michaela performed her PhD thesis with Professor Heike Allgayer and Professor Christian Manegold at the University of Heidelberg and the German Cancer Research Centre in Heidelberg, Germany (2005-2009). The focus of her PhD thesis was on preclinical studies on the anti-metastatic effects of drugs in lung cancer and the identification of potential drug target genes. The main focus of Michaela’s work at the ADRI is to investigate whether microRNAs can be detected in the blood of mesothelioma patients. By assessing the microRNA content of blood from mesothelioma patients a number of microRNAs have been identified that may act as a marker of diseases. This research is supported by The Swift Family Bequest & Mr Jim Tully Fellowship.

Dr Yuen Yee Cheng joined ADRI as a Research Fellow in March 2010. She completed her PhD at the Chinese University of Hong Kong where she starts her research in epigenetic alterations in gastric cancer. She then undertook two years of Postdoctoral training at the University of Hong Kong. Epigenetic gene regulation has been the major focus of Dr Cheng’s research efforts her research in epigenetic alterations in cancer has been published in prestigious international journals. At ADRI, Dr Cheng continues her epigenetic study as well as focusing on microRNA profiling of malignant mesothelioma.

Dr Ngan Ching Cheng completed her PhD at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, on neuroblastoma tumour suppressor genes. She then worked on mouse models of Fanconi Anaemia and Fragile X syndrome at the Free University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands Cancer Institute and Erasmus University, Rotterdam. Since her relocation to Sydney in 2001 she has been working on experimental therapies for neuroblastoma using the TH-MYCN mouse model at the Children’s Cancer Institute. She is now engaged at the ADRI to work on novel treatments for mesothelioma.

Dr Steven Kao, is an oncology fellow at Concord Hospital, has started his PhD at the ADRI and is focusing his research on predictive and prognostic factors in malignant Mesothelioma. Steven is also instrumental in collecting data from a cohort of recently diagnosed patients with malignant mesothelioma in NSW to reveal the current practice of diagnosis and treatment. This project is funded by the Dust Diseases Board.

Dr Anthony Linton is an oncology fellow at Concord Hospital and started his PhD at the ADRI building on the research success of the ADRI to identify new bio-markers and potential targets for new treatment approaches for malignant mesothelioma. Dr Linton has completed a review on the epidemiology of mesothelioma and in particular on the consequences of occupational and environmental asbestos exposure. Dr Linton is supported by the Biaggio Signorelli Foundation..

Marian Barker joined ADRI as Biobank Officer in December 2010. Having completed her Masters in International Public Health at Sydney University in 2000, Marian took up an AYAD position as health educator in Bangkok with the Office of Primary Health Care, a division of the Thai Ministry of Health. She later coordinated an online Directory of Clinical Databases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of London. Marian returned to Sydney in 2004 and worked part time at the Workers Compensation Dust Diseases Board of NSW, contributing research to several asbestos related diseases projects.