New child cancer specialist for Auckland

Paediatric oncologist, Dr Andrew Wood has returned to the University of Auckland to research the genetic mistakes driving childhood leukaemias.

Dr Wood graduated from the University of Aucklands School of Medicine, and trained as a paediatrician at Starship Childrens Hospital before going to the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia as a Fulbright Scholar.

His research programme will study and model the genetic mistakes driving childhood leukaemias with the ultimate goal of finding Achilles heels that can be exploited to treat leukaemia in new ways.

After seven years at the United States number one ranked childrens hospital, the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), he returned to New Zealand for family and friends and because there was a small but committed and capable team doing exciting work that he wanted to be part of.

Dr Wood specialises in the diagnosis and treatment of cancers in children and adolescents. Alongside treating patients at Starship Childrens Hospital he will lead a research team and collaborate internationally with the aim of making childhood cancer a stumbling block, not a road block.

He hopes his research will contribute to the long-term aim of improving survival rates for Kiwi kids with cancer and to cure more gently.

Cure Kids will be a major contributor to his programme of research that is based out of the University of Auckland. His repatriation to New Zealand is also supported by the Auckland Medical Research Foundation through a Goodfellow Repatriation Fellowship.

Cure Kids CEO Vicki Lee says Dr Woods appointment is a huge win for New Zealand child cancer research.

Cancer survival rates for children are a success story of modern medicine as diseases that were once death sentences now carry an average five-year survival rate of 80 percent.

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New child cancer specialist for Auckland