Prof Maher Gandhi

Professor Maher Gandhi is the Executive Director and Director of Clinical Research at Mater Research,  Director of Mater Research Institute-The University of Queensland, and a pre-eminent senior staff haematologist at the Princess Alexandra Hospital. Maher leads the Blood Cancer Research group at Mater Research with a team of nine researchers. To date he has received more than $21 million in competitive funding and has authored more than 120 scientific publications, with a very high proportion of these being in high-impact journals as senior author.

Within his field, Maher and his team have made significant contributions to the understanding of the role of immune evasion within the tumour microenvironment of patients with lymphoma (in the areas of EBV-driven and non-viral driven lymphomas). To translate his findings, he runs a number of innovative early phase clinical trials. These are funded by the Federal Government’s Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF ) as part of the Rare Cancers, Rare Diseases and Unmet Need Clinical Trials program. The funding includes CIA $1.6 million for the TREBL-1 'chemo-free' study of EBV-driven lymphomas in the immunosuppressed, $3.6 million for the CLARIFY study to provide CAR T cells in relapsed/refractory lymphoma, and $2.8 million for the TREBL-2 study of EBV-driven lymphomas in the immunocompetent. He is also CIE with funding of $800 000 for the international RADAR study of early-stage Hodgkin Lymphoma.

Maher is internationally recognised as a leader in efforts to identify the role of immune-based prognosticators that accurately predict which patients will experience an early relapse, associated with a shorter survival, and who would be candidates for novel cell-based treatment approaches that target ‘non-self’ tumour associated proteins such as foreign or neo antigens.

Maher's mentorship is highly sought after, with many domestic and international requests to undertake Research Higher Degrees (RHDs) in his laboratory. He has supervised 14 PhD, five MPhil, and five Honours students through to completion. Currently there are two Biomedical PhD and two Clinical PhD students under his supervision. He has also supervised numerous Canadian, UK and European biomedical research placements, including several that have gone on to do RHDs or Medicine.

Maher has been a Specialist Haematologist for 20 years, completing his medical training at Cambridge and Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in the UK, and in Toronto Canada. He is a member of the Federal Government-appointed National Blood Cancer Task Force steering committee that aims to improve access to blood cancer services across Australia. He completed a PhD in Viral Immunology at Cambridge and came to Brisbane on a Fellowship in 2003. He has received uninterrupted NHMRC funding since 2005 including an ongoing $1.4 million National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) project grant to interrogate the tumour microenvironment in follicular lymphoma. He has sat on numerous NHMRC and philanthropic grant review panels, and given frequent international and national keynote lectures.