Professor John Zalcberg

Professor John Zalcberg is Head of the Cancer Research Program in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University, providing academic leadership to a number of clinical quality registries. He holds the inaugural Tony Charlton Chair in Cancer Research at the Alfred Hospital, Melbourne, Australia. Prior to taking up his current position in 2015, he was Director of the Division of Cancer Medicine at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre (Peter Mac) in Melbourne for 17 years and Chief Medical Officer at that institution for 5 years.

He has held leadership positions with the Australasian Gastrointestinal Trials Group (AGITG), Cancer Trials Australia, the Cancer Drugs Alliance, Australian Red Cross Blood Service, the Cancer Institute of New South Wales, the Clinical Oncological Society of Australia (COSA) and the Australian Clinical Trials Alliance. He is a current member of the Board of the ICON Group, All.Can Australia as well as PRAXIS.

He has received several awards including a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM), the Cancer Achievement Award from the Medical Oncology Group of Australia and the Tom Reeve Award for Outstanding Contributions to Cancer Care from COSA. In 2014, the AGITG created the annual “John Zalcberg OAM Award for Excellence in Cancer Research” and in 2018 he was awarded the Red Cross Distinguished Service Medal.

Professor Zalcberg’s clinical research interests include gastrointestinal (GI) cancer and quality of care and he has published over 350 articles in peer-reviewed journals. He was the Principal Investigator for the EORTC advanced GIST trial in Australia and continues to be actively involved in trials in this disease, as well as other gastrointestinal cancers in which he continues an active clinical practice.