Dr Guillermo Gomez
(BSc Hons, PhD)
Head, Tissue Architecture and Organ Function Laboratory
Centre for Cancer Biology, The University of South Australia and SA Pathology
Dr Gomez performed his BSci(Hons) in Chemistry (2004), PhD (2008) and first postdoctoral position (2008-2010) at the National University of Cordoba in Argentina, where he acquired experience in cell biology, quantitative image analysis and computer programming. Then, during his postdoctoral training at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, the University of Queensland, he implemented novel fluorescence microscopy technologies to study the mechanobiology of cell-cell interactions and how these contribute to tissue organisation in normal and pathological circumstances.
In 2017, He began his independent laboratory at the Centre for Cancer Biology, whose research focuses on brain cancer. His laboratory is well-known for its contribution to the development of cutting-edge wet-lab, imaging and computational approaches, including artificial intelligence, to study fresh tumour samples and the growth of patient-derived brain tumour organoids. These developments led to the creation of new brain cancer research resources, permitting the identification of new molecular targets to treat brain cancer based on the tumour microenvironment.
Dr Gomez' scientific achievements are highlighted by >75 publications in the field of mechanobiology and brain cancer (H-index=33, >3,500 citations) and nationally competitive grans for >$8M. These include research articles in Nature Cell Biology (x3), Nature Communications, British Journal of Cancer and BMC Biomedical Engineering in where he is first or corresponding author. Dr Gomez has been awarded grants from the Australian Research Council (ARC Future Fellowship 2017-2020), The Cure Brain Cancer Foundation, The Charlie Teo Foundation and The Neurosurgical Research Foundation.
Current Projects & Areas of Interest:
The Gomez Lab primary focus is translational research in brain cancer by identifying new molecular targets that inhibit the interactions between tumour cells and stromal cells within highly vascularised regions of brain tumours and which are essential in mediating glioblastoma growth, invasion and resistance to therapy.
To achieve this goal, our laboratory has pioneered cutting-edge approaches for the study of fresh patient-derived brain tumour samples that include:
Culture and expansion of patient-derived brain tumour explant organoids.
High-content drug and genetic screenings in organoids using multimodal microscopy.
Single-cell RNA sequencing and spatial transcriptomics
Artificial intelligence
We now are exploiting our ability to perform in-depth studies on patient-derived tumour materials through the implementation of these new technologies to:
Interrogate and access cellular and molecular information of cellular interactions that drive brain tumour progression directly from the patient's tumour to identify new targets for brain cancer.
Make predictions of survival benefit in response to different treatments, on a patient-by-patient basis, based on clinical information at the moment of diagnosis.
Perform functional experiments in better and clinically relevant in vitro models for brain cancer, whose results predict patients' response to treatment in the clinical setting.