Prof Jayesh Desai

Professor Jayesh Desai is a Medical Oncologist at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. He has extensive experience in translational research applied to early drug development, particularly in sarcomas and in colorectal cancer. He heads the Phase I/Early Drug Development program and is Deputy-Director of the PCCTU, and leads Peter Mac’s efforts in its formal engagements with Industry Alliances and Partnerships.

He has recently been appointed as the Associate Director Clinical Research at Peter Mac. Jayesh has been the Chair of the Cancer Trials Australia (CTA) Phase I Drug Development Program for a number of years, has been Principal Investigator on 40 clinical trials over the last 5 years including 30 Phase I and 1st in man trials. These have been both investigator initiated, as well as collaborative trials with Pharma and Biotechs, across a broad array of agents including kinase inhibitors and novel immuno-oncology agents/combinations.

He has authored/co-authored approximately 150 publications in journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, The Lancet and the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

He has served in a number of key national/international committees including ASCO and ESMO in Sarcoma and Drug Development, and has been successful in obtaining approximately $40M in peer-reviewed and direct industry research funding.  Jayesh co-chairs the Bone and Soft Tissue Sarcoma service at Peter Mac, and has been intimately involved in establishing collaborative sarcoma research in Australia, co-founding the Australasian Sarcoma Studies Group (now ANZSA) in 2008, acted as its Scientific Chair, and then group Chair. Jayesh completed his Medical Oncology training in Melbourne in 2002.

He completed a translational research fellowship in sarcoma at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA.