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Associate Professor Joost Lesterhuis

Scientific Director | Theme Lead, Therapies for Surgery (interim)

Joost headshot

About Associate Professor Joost Lesterhuis

Associate Professor Joost Lesterhuis is Scientific Director of the WA Comprehensive Kids Cancer Centre, Head of cancer research at The Kids Research Institute Australia, Head of The Kids Sarcoma Translational Research team and Adjunct Associate Professor at The University of Western Australia. Associate Professor Lesterhuis has a background as a dual-trained medical oncologist and researcher in tumour immunology and cancer biology. 

Since 2013, when he and his family moved permanently to Australia, Associate Professor Lesterhuis has been a fulltime researcher, with a special focus on cancer immunology research. His research combines several fields of science, including cancer immunology, drug discovery, and translational oncology. 

Therapies for Surgery themeFor many children with solid cancers, surgery is a vital step in their treatment. Despite it being the oldest treatment for cancer, surprisingly little is known about how surgery affects the body’s response to cancer, or how this response can be harnessed for therapeutic benefit. By mapping the body’s response following surgery and how that affects the biology of cancer cells, we aim to discover new and more effective ways to target the cancer with therapy.Explore this research theme
  1. A New Era for PPARγ

    Journal of Medicinal Chemistry