Prior to joining the Hudson Institute in August 2015 as head of the Centre for Cancer Research, Assoc. Prof Firestein led a basic research lab and directed clinical translational research spanning from experimental (early discovery) across Phase I/II early clinical biomarker/companion diagnostics development. His basic research focuses on target ID/validation and molecular pathology of colon cancer, using NGS technologies and state of the art functional high throughput screens. His scientific work has resulted in peer reviewed high impact publications (including Nature, Cancer Cell, Cell, and Journal of Clinical Investigation) as well as seven patents.

TOP 5 PUBLICATIONS

McCleland M., Blaschke K., Chopra VS., Segal E., Watanabe C., Haley B., Mayba O., Yaylaoglu M., Firestein R. CCAT1 is an enhancer template RNA that predicts BET sensitivity in colorectal cancer. J. Clin. Invest. 2016; 126:639-52.

Storm E., Durinck S., Tremayne J., Klijavin N., Tan C., Ye X., Hongo JA., Firestein R., Blackwood E., Metcalfe C., Yauch B., de Sauvage F. Targeted therapy directed against PTPRK-RSPO3 fusion-positive colorectal tumours inhibit stem cell function and promote differentiation. Nature 2016; 529:97-100.

Junttila M., Mao W., Wang X. Wang B., Pham T., Flygare J., Yu SF., Yee S., Goldenberg D., Fields C., Eastham-Anderson JE., Singh M., Hongo JA., Firestein R., Schutten M., Flagella K., Polakis P., Polson A. Targeting LGR5+ Cells with an Antibody-drug conjugate for the treatment of colon cancer. Sci. Transl. Med. 2015; 7:314

Adler AS., McCleland ML., Yee S., Yaylaoglu M., Hussain S., Cosino E., Quinones G., Modrusan Z., Seshagiri S., Torres E., Chopra VS., Haley B., Zhang Z., Blackwood EM., Singh M., Junttila M., Stephan JP., Liu J., Pau G., Fearon ER., Jiang Z., Firestein R. An integrative analysis of colon cancer identifies an essential function for PRPF6 in tumour growth. Genes Dev 2014; 28:1068-84.

Jaiswal BS., Kljavin NM., Stawiski EW., Chan E., Parikh C., Durinck S., Chaudhuri S., Pujara K., Guillory J., Edgar KA., Janakiraman V., Scholz RP., Bowman KK., Lorenzo M., Li H., Wu J., Yuan W., Peters BA., Kan Z., Stinson J., Mak M., Modrusan Z., Eigenbrot C., Firestein R., Stern HM., Rajalingam K., Schaefer G., Merchant MA., Sliwkowski MX., de Sauvage FJ., Seshagiri S. Oncogenic ERBB3 mutations in human cancer. Cancer Cell 2013; 23:603-17.