Prof John Zalcberg
Prof John Zalcberg is a medical oncologist at Alfred Health and until recently, was the Head of the Cancer Research Program in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University.
Professor Zalcberg's clinical areas of interests include gastrointestinal (GI) cancer, the diagnosis and management of patients with gastrointestinal tumours (GIST) and quality of care. He has published over 380 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.
Professor John Zalcberg is immediate, past Head of the Cancer Research Program in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University, and continues to provide academic leadership to a number of clinical quality registries. He held the inaugural Tony Charlton Chair in Cancer Research at the Alfred Hospital, Melbourne, Australia until July 2023. Prior to taking up his most recent 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.
A co-founder of the Lorne Cancer Conference and the Australasian Gastrointestinal Trials Group (AGITG), he was the prior Chair of the Board of AGITG and a previous board member of Cancer Trials Australia. He was the Co-Chair of the Cancer Drugs Alliance and immediate past Chair and current Board member of the Australian Clinical Trials Alliance. Other current Board positions include ICON, Praxis and All.Can Australia. He is also a past board member of the Cancer Institute of New South Wales, the Australian Red Cross Blood Service and past-President of the Clinical Oncological Society of Australia (COSA).
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. Most recently (June 2023), he was awarded an AO (Officer in the General Division of the Order of Australia).