A/Prof Dominic Wall

Associate Professor Dominic Wall is Peter Mac's Executive Director of Business Ventures.

This role provides leadership and management for programs and departments relating to both existing and emerging business ventures, specifically: the current Pathology services and an associated business unit - nexomics - which provides specialised accredited medical oncology testing for clinical research, as well the new national Centre of Excellence in Cellular Immunotherapy which was established in 2019 with an $80 million contribution from the Commonwealth Government.

This program intends to provide new means for Australian patients to access innovative cell based immunotherapy products such as CAR-T cells.

He is also the Chief Scientific Officer of Peter Mac’s majority owned and controlled independent and commercial business Cell Therapies Pty Ltd which provides specialised contract manufacturing and testing of cells for human therapy, predominantly in the field of cellular immunotherapy and gene therapy.

Dominic is the responsible person to provide the executive support for all of these businesses to flourish in a public hospital setting.

Dominic has been directly involved in cell therapy manufacturing since the 1990s and was responsible for manufacturing Australia’s first CAR-T products in 2008. Cell Therapies has Australia’s only TGA licence for manufacturing of both commercial and clinical trial CAR-T products, and Dominic carries final accountability for quality and manufacturing of those products.

He has been also involved in pathology service delivery since his training in London at the University of London School of Pathology at Middlesex & UCH, followed by a PhD at the University of Melbourne and a Founding Fellowship in the Faculty of Science in the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia.

He was responsible for the expansion and re-establishment of specialised pathology services at Peter Mac in 2001, having fully restructured the services, establishing new on-site services for histology and microbiology and establishing a new 24-hour core laboratory service. His technical expertise is in cell-based therapy, immunology and flow cytometry as well as restructure and corporatisation of internal hospital services.

His research interest is in-vivo cell therapy imaging using PET/SPECT and MRI using novel imaging agents to track the activity and life of these cells in patients. He is the current chair of the Legal & Regulatory Subcommittee of the International Society for Cell Therapy (ANZ) and has been the regional president of his professional society (ISCT) twice. His passion is to bring new technologies into life at Peter Mac,  such as gene modified cells for therapy which are proving to be potent and effective new treatments for cancer, and which can save lives. Bringing these technologies to Australian patients requires new funding models and new partnerships with other hospitals, companies and government.