Professor Marina Pajic

Associate Professor Marina Pajic completed her PhD in the laboratory of Professor Michelle Haber at the Children’s Cancer Institute (CCI), University of New South Wales, where she investigated chemoresistance mechanisms in childhood cancers, supported by a University Postgraduate Award and a CCI Postgraduate Scholarship. In 2006, Marina moved to work with Professor Piet Borst at the Netherlands Cancer Institute where she developed physiologically-relevant mouse models to study chemotherapy resistance and discovered new mechanisms which guide survival of therapy-resistant cancer-initiating cells during a process termed “transient dormancy”.

Following her return to Australia in 2010 and collaborative efforts within the International Cancer Genome Consortium, Marina has established unique personalised medicine projects for pancreatic cancer, supported by three fellowships from Cancer Institute NSW. Since 2013 Marina has led the Personalised Cancer Therapeutics Lab at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research. Understanding the role of “-omic” alterations in cancer progression and treatment failure with a view to developing novel effective therapeutic approaches are the focus of her research.

She takes an active role in training emerging scientists (Honours and PhD projects). Marina engages and communicates regularly with the public through Garvan’s public events. She is an EACR ambassador and co-director of the Australasian Pancreatic Club.

Marina's research is supported by funding from the Snow Medical Research Fellowship, NHMRC, Cancer Institute NSW, Australia Cancer Research Foundation, Ms Jane Hemstritch, the Girgensohn Foundation and Paul Ainsworth Foundation.