PROFILE

A/Prof Inês Silva, MD FRACP PhD is a Medical Oncologist and Senior Researcher at Melanoma Institute Australia, The University of Sydney, and at Champalimaud Foundation. She received her MD degree at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Lisbon, Portugal) and completed specialist training in Medical Oncology at Instituto Português de Oncologia (Lisbon, Portugal). She did her PhD at Bhardwaj Lab (part of Interdisciplinary Melanoma Cooperative Group and New York University [NYU] Cancer Institute, New York, United States of America) in tumor immunology, describing how the dysfunction of the protective innate immune mechanisms, including NK cells, can contribute towards melanoma progression. She did two clinical fellowships in melanoma, one at NYU Cancer Institute (2014), and more recently, at Melanoma Institute Australia (2017-2019) where she was co-investigator in phase I, II and III clinical trials (neoadjuvant, adjuvant and metastatic) in melanoma. Ines has presented her research work in several meetings (SMR, ESMO) and oral presentations at SITC, AACR, ASCO and ESMO; and she got the best poster award at ESMO 2019 and Cancer Conquer merit award in 2019, 2020 and 2021, including the Bradley Stuart Beller Endowed Merit Award for the highest ranking ASCO abstract overall (2020). She has over 50 publications, including 1st author publications in Lancet Oncology, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Cancer Cell, NEJM and JITC, amongst others, senior author in JITC publication, and co-author of publications in Cancer Cell and JCI on the field of melanoma and immuno-oncology. Her main research interests are (1) Biomarkers of response to immunotherapy and targeted therapy in melanoma; (2) Mechanisms of innate and adaptive resistance with immunotherapy; (3) Patterns of metastization and patterns of response to immunotherapy; (4) Mechanism of toxicity with immunotherapy