Ankur Sharma

Ankur Sharma is a laboratory head at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research. He is known for discovering the Oncofetal ecosystem in liver cancer and for his expertise in single-cell genomics and spatial transcriptomics. Dr. Sharma earned his PhD from the Indian Institute of Science in 2014, where he received the Best PhD Thesis award. After a brief post-doctoral stint at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, he joined the Genome Institute of Singapore's single-cell and spatial genomics division. His work in this field was well-recognized, and he received several awards, including the GIS Outstanding Clinical Partnership Award, the Conquer Cancer ASCO Foundation Merit Award, the University of British Columbia Co-op Supervisor Recognition Award, and the 10x Genomics Clinical Translation Research Network. In 2021, Dr Sharma established his laboratory at the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research in Perth, where he worked on the clinical translation of oncofetal cells as biomarkers and therapeutic targets in liver cancer. In 2024, he was recruited to the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in the Translational Genomics program, where he collaborates extensively with liver cancer clinicians across Australia and the APAC region. Ankur has published work in Cell, Nature Cancer, Science, Immunity, and Nature Reviews Cancer. After seven years of laboratory-based research, this work has led to a phase IIb clinical trial (DEFINERx050) to evaluate oncofetal cells as a biomarker of immunotherapy response in liver cancer. Ankur's work is supported by funding from NHMRC (Ideas, Clinical trial and cohort), MRFF (EMCR), CSL Centenary Fellowship, philanthropy and Industry partners.