NATIONAL SPEAKER

Mark Polizzotto is Professor of Medicine in the College of Health and Medicine at ANU, where he established and leads the ANU Clinical Hub for Interventional Research (CHOIR).
Mark is a haematologist and clinical triallist whose work sits the intersection of immunity, infection and cancer. He has a focus on developing new therapies to prevent and treat malignancy, particularly infection-related cancers and cancers with a global health impact. Mark's work in therapeutic development has led to new therapy registrations and influenced treatment guidelines in Australia and internationally, including co-leading development of an oral immunomodulator for Kaposi sarcoma which led to the first new drug approval for KS in over 20 years. During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, at the invitation of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, he led international randomised trials of immunotherapies for COVID-19. His clinical trials are underpinned by strong links with translational science, where his contributions have led to paradigmatic shifts in our understanding of the pathogenesis of key viral malignancies and complications of HIV infection.