Anthony Gill holds a personal chair as Professor of Surgical Pathology at the University of Sydney and is a senior staff specialist in anatomical pathology at Royal North Shore Hospital. He is the current chair of the Australian Pancreatic Genome Initiative (APGI). His research efforts are centred on translating advances in knowledge gained at the basic science level into clinically useful diagnostic tests including classical morphology. His work has been central to the widespread acceptance of the new class of neoplasias now known as succinate dehydrogenase deficient (including two new entities: SDH deficient GIST and SDH deficient renal carcinoma).

In addition to over 300 original research publications, he has co-authored 10 WHO blue book chapters across three volumes (urological, head and neck and endocrine) and is a member of the WHO consensus panel which met in Lyons France last year to finalize the WHO 2017 classification of endocrine neoplasia.

Title: “Morphologomics – Challenges for Surgical Pathology in the Genomic Age”

Abstract:

Despite the addition of some ancillary tests, the fundamental techniques and basic morphological approaches to diagnosis employed in the diagnostic surgical pathology laboratory have not changed in more than 100 years. Haematology and biochemistry laboratories and, more recently, microbiology and genomic laboratories, have undergone tremendous automation with subsequent efficiency dividends. Despite the obvious appeal of ‘omics’ technologies, such approaches have been virtually impossible to introduce into anatomical pathology, perhaps because the art of morphology has always been a whole of patient or omics approach. Of note, omics approaches have consistently missed some of the most basic morphologic patterns of disease, many of which have profound clinical importance.

In this lecture Prof. Gill will introduce and discuss the concept of ‘morphologomics’ that is omics approaches critically reimagined and reappraised from the viewpoint of classic morphology.