NSW Health Pathol­o­gy genomics ser­vices deliv­er world-class mol­e­c­u­lar diag­nos­tics to the peo­ple of NSW, while also dri­ving vital research and inno­va­tion.   

So it’s impor­tant that we train and devel­op our genomics work­force to meet cur­rent and future needs.  

Jared Lane is an up-and-com­ing genet­ic sci­en­tist based at our Roy­al North Shore Hos­pi­tal lab­o­ra­to­ry 

He’s work­ing on new assays in the myeloid can­cer space (blood can­cer that affects the blood and bone mar­row), while also under­tak­ing a Roy­al Col­lege of Pathol­o­gists of Aus­trala­sia Fac­ul­ty of Sci­ence fel­low­ship in Genet­ic Pathol­o­gy, and jug­gling par­ent­ing.   

He has a master’s degree in pub­lic health, under­took pub­lic health research for Mac­quar­ie University’s Aus­tralian Insti­tute of Health and Inno­va­tion, and recent­ly took on a research role in Platelet Genomics at the Kolling Insti­tute.   

We asked Jared about his work and why he enjoys it.  

 Why Genetics/Genomics?   

Our genet­ics play such a foun­da­tion­al role in who we are, our health and well-being. I have always been fas­ci­nat­ed by how just a tiny change in our DNA code can be the dif­fer­ence between life and death, devel­op­ing can­cer, or any num­ber of oth­er con­di­tions. Being able to search for and find those answers and visu­alise those changes to our DNA is still end­less­ly cap­ti­vat­ing and reward­ing to me. 

 From a pure­ly work per­spec­tive, I enjoy that genomics allows a mix­ture of the lab-based tech­ni­cal side and the office-based ana­lyt­i­cal side. It’s evolv­ing and expand­ing very rapid­ly; it’s excit­ing to be in a dis­ci­pline where the knowl­edge, skills and tech­niques are always chang­ing.   

Tell us about your career path  

I start­ed my pathol­o­gy career in bio­chem­istry and endocrinol­o­gy at Roy­al North Shore Hos­pi­tal before set­tling in genomics in 2013. Ini­tial­ly I worked on screen­ing for inher­it­ed dis­eases in the Syd­ney Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty. In pathol­o­gy we don’t usu­al­ly see the human faces on the oth­er side of the work we do, so that was real­ly worthwhile. 

In recent years, I have been quite heav­i­ly involved with haema­to­log­i­cal malig­nan­cy test­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly in mea­sur­able resid­ual dis­ease (MRD).  

What are you work­ing on?   

In my diag­nos­tic role I am work­ing on new assays in the myeloid can­cer space. We have an excel­lent team of haema­to-pathol­o­gists at RNSH who are very inter­est­ed in Genomics and that team­work and col­lab­o­ra­tion makes the job very rewarding. 

In my research role, I have joined a research col­lab­o­ra­tive, the Syd­ney Platelet Group. Inher­it­ed platelet dis­or­ders are com­plex dis­eases and often dif­fi­cult to diag­nose. The project aims to inte­grate dif­fer­ent ways to improve diag­no­sis, and I am work­ing on the genomics side with the aim of trans­lat­ing this research into a diag­nos­tic genom­ic test offered by NSW Health Pathol­o­gy.   

NSW Health Pathol­o­gy is proud to play a vital role in the sus­tained, sys­tem-wide effort to strength­en can­cer care, guid­ed by the Can­cer Insti­tute NSW and the NSW Can­cer Plan 2022–2027. 

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